{"id":4506,"date":"2011-05-05T08:22:25","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T12:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/?p=4506"},"modified":"2011-05-05T08:22:25","modified_gmt":"2011-05-05T12:22:25","slug":"figures-of-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/2011\/05\/05\/figures-of-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Figures of speech"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nagi<\/a>
Nagi men shaking hands<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cYou crossed my nose!\u201d the Nagi man shouted at his brother, angrily drawing his finger across his nose.<\/p>\n

What?<\/p>\n

Idioms \u2013 those phrases that don\u2019t literally make any sense but convey a lot of meaning \u2013 are tough to master in any language. Yet can you imagine trying to hold a conversation \u2013 or teach \u2013 without using them?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m hanging on by the skin of my teeth.\u201d Huh? Teeth don\u2019t have skin. Where\u2019d that phrase come from?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cake is a lie.\u201d My teenage son said that. I have no idea what it means.<\/p>\n

\u201cAiring your dirty laundry in public.\u201d Who even airs their laundry anymore? Or maybe I think no one does that because I live in Florida, where it\u2019s so humid that hanging clothes outside would just make them more damp.<\/p>\n

But in sense, that\u2019s what the Nagi man was doing.<\/p>\n

His brother was having an affair with the man\u2019s wife. And as far as the missionaries who are learning the Nagi language can tell, \u201cyou crossed my nose\u201d is similar to saying, \u201cyou did this right under my nose.\u201d Which is also a rather odd expression, unless you have a very large nose.<\/p>\n

The offense resulted in a village meeting, and that eventually led to an agreement and a penalty that the brother paid. Everyone involved said they were satisfied \u2013 or, to use another Nagi idiom, their stomachs were good.<\/p>\n

But that wasn\u2019t really the end of it.<\/p>\n

Hushed discussions continued for a while afterward. Not about the affair. About whether everything had been done \u201cright.\u201d Never mind whether the people involved were satisfied; was everything done the way the spirits wanted it done?<\/p>\n

If not, someone could still get sick from sorcery, the Nagis feared.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, it all came back to that. Fear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learning Nagi idioms is just one of the challenges facing missionaries who are preparing to share God\u2019s Word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[238],"class_list":{"0":"post-4506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ministry","7":"tag-fear","8":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}