Wenja Language: waycha

Su shayar, sakush. Nu Brina mu-kwa Kintukis Yuniversiti-su dacha-dachayam, ha-na sakwan dajrim Winjas mash warhamas. Ma-tan kamya warshta jinafayam: waycha.

Good morning, friends. Brenna and I are currently focused on teaching at the University of Kentucky, and so we won’t be able to say much about Wenja in the upcoming days. But I will introduce y’all to a common word: waycha ‘village’.

While running around Oros, you’ll often hear Takkar talk about the waycha.  After he completes a major task, such as escaping Ull & Batari, you’ll hear him say: Nu waycham nasam.  “Now I return home to the village.”  We’ve already talked about the words nu ‘now, and’ and nasa ‘go home’, with the normal -m suffix to indicate that this is an “I” form.  Takkar also tells random Wenja about his waycha, bidding them to go to the west (nartaram) to join his tribe.

The village is one of my most favorite parts of the game.  You of course house all of the major characters there: Tensay, Sayla, Wogah, Karoosh, Jayma, and Urki. There are other quest givers there, too, such as Manoo.  But perhaps my favorite thing about the village is all of the random activity that goes on — just watch the villagers go about their normal lives. They play drums (kutaya), sing (sangwa), wrestle (yawda), have sex (fupawsa), and take care of their children.

And what does waycha go back to in PIE?  *weiḱ- / *woiḱo- ‘village, home’, the source of Latin vīcus ‘settlement’, Sanskrit viś ‘settlement’, Gothic weihs ‘village, and Greek oîkos ‘house’.  While English doesn’t have a word directly inherited from PIE *weiḱ- / *woiḱo- any more, we still have it hidden in words like vic-inity (originally “in the neighborhood”) and economics (< Greek oiko-nomikos “practiced in the management of a household or family”).