Listing Things and events in Kuna are listed in their long form, and the conjunction tegine

56 Trade Language

5.5 Vocabulary

1. -gwen ‗one‘ 2. -bo ‗two‘ 3. -pá ‗three‘ 4. -bake ‗four‘ 5. -atal ‗five‘ 6. -nerkwa ‗six‘ 7. -kugle ‗seven‘ 8. -pabak ‗eight‘ 9. -bakebak ‗nine‘ 10. -ambe ‗ten‘ 11. -tula- ‗twenty‘ 12. tegine ‗and‘ 13. egmal ‗the remainder, the rest‘ 14. karta ‗dollar billletterbook‘ 15. kwaderno ‗notebook‘ 16. kachi ‗hammock‘ 17. sabured ‗skirt‘ 57 6 POSITIONAL WORDS

6.1 Dialogue

The position of a person or thing is very important in Kuna. Everything in a Kuna ‘s world is considered to be either lying, sitting, standing leaning, suspended, or on ―all fours,‖ as illustrated in the following dialogue. A visitor comes to pick up a fishing spear he has arranged to borrow. 1. Visitor: Anná. ‗Hello.‘ 2. Villager: Mai.Chi. ‗I‘m home.‘ 3. Visitor: ¿Ibi chenai? ‗What are you doing?‘ 4. Villager: Chuli. Pinche chi. ‗Nothing. I‘m just sitting.‘ 5. Visitor: Mmm. ¿Mimmidin? ‗Uh huh. And the baby?‘ 6. Villager: Kammai. ‗She is lying sleeping.‘ 7. Visitor: Ajáj. ¿Pe omedin? ‗Oh. And your wife?‘ 8. Villager: Mas tuji. ‗She is just cooking.‘ 9. Visitor: Mmm. Eswaldin, ¿pia mai? ‗Hmm. Where is lying the fishing spear?‘ 10. Villager: Webal kwichi. ‗It is standing over there.‘ 11. Visitor: Nuedi. ‗Thank you.‘ The visitor gets up, takes the spear and starts to leave. 12. Visitor: Kujal. ‗See you later.‘ 13. Villager: Eye. ‗Okay.‘

6.2 Pronunciation

It is important that the student studying Kuna continue to practice the general conversational intonation as well as give special attention to the intonation of a disclaimer response.

6.2.1 Conversational intonation Ex. 1 –2

Practice your ability to carry on a normal conversation in Kuna by drilling the intonation patterns. Exercise 1 . Intonation practice Mimic the teacher in Dialogue 6.1 by humming the intonation. Pay special attention to the acknowledgements of a comment such as ajáj, mmm, eye. Exercise 2 . Pronunciation practice Mimic the teacher in Dialogue 6.1, formulating the individual sounds as closely as possible without 1 slowing down, or 2 losing the intonation pattern.

6.2.2 Disclaimer nothing-special-is-happening response Ex. 3

It is very common to use the disclaimer response intonation see 6.4.3 in reply to routine questions such as: ‗What have you been doing?‘, ‗What are you going to do?‘, ‗Where have you been?‘, and ‗Where are you going? ‘. The pitch of a disclaimer response is higher than that of a normal reply and there is also a tendency to laryngealize the utterance, i.e., there is a different kind of vibration of the vocal cords. Exercise 3 . Disclaimer response intonation The teacher says Sentence 1 and the class repeats it; the teacher says Sentence 2 and the class repeats it, etc.. This exercise should be repeated several times.