Remember not to confuse ‘kogwob’ (lime) with ‘kogwab’ (yellow). You don’t want to accidentally dip your beetlenut pepper into pollen instead of lime after all! #PNGThings #KovolLanguage
Your ankle is your ‘kot musom’, the eye of your leg. I guess it’s because it’s round? #KovolLanguage
Adjectives don’t seem to be used very often. Basic adjectives like good, bad, new and old are used but naturally speakers don’t chain adjectives “the new, big, red bowl”, describing objects isn’t very common in natural speech. #KovolLanguage
The nearest equivalent to the concept of a year is emond, a type of tree. It sheds it’s leaves at a certain point each year and that’s used to mark seasons. #KovolLanguage
The standard greeting is asamog bili, literally “good morning”. Was it always this way, or is this western influence? I doubt we’ll ever find out as living memory doesn’t go back far enough. #KovolLanguage
There are about 12 different specific words for rat “singasim”. Same for most other animals, and the same for pretty much every different plant in the jungle. It’s overwhelming! #KovolLanguage
Generic words are used in many places for new things. While working with chainsaws we fueled them with nomol “water”, sharpened them with a pusilim “stone” and lubricated them with nomol too. #KovolLanguage
The generic word for animals is “singol” which means meat. What’s that noise? Oh, just meat running through the bush. #KovolLanguage
A clearing in the jungle is known as a “hav peg”, a clear place. A bald head is the same word, a clear head, “omongot peg”. #KovolLanguage
Remote past, recent past and future tenses are marked by a suffix on the verb, but there doesn’t seem to be a present tense suffix. Instead you add a continuous aspect suffix to the recent past tense suffix. #KovolLanguage