English translation: Today’s Diyari words pardiyali tharlpa thayirna ngamayi ‘The caterpillar is sitting down eathing’
This blog post follows on from the previous post about mawakantyi ‘greedy guts’ and the Very Hungry Caterpillar.
In Diyari we can express the idea that an action is being done while sitting down by placing ngama-rna ‘to sit’ after the events being described. This is a common expression as many actions (like cooking, making things, weaving etc.) were traditionally carried out sitting on the ground. Here are some examples:
ngaldra yatharna ngamayi ‘We two talk sitting down’
kupali pipa dakarna ngamayi ‘The child writes sitting down’
Notice that you can express the time of such a situation by adding the relevant auxiliary after ngama-rna, as in:
ngandriyali puka wayirna ngamarna warayi ‘Mother sat down cooking bread’
ngathu nhinha kirringankarna ngamalha nganayi ‘I will sit down and teach him’
So, our words today are:
pardiyali ‘grub, caterpillar’ (the ending –yali indicates that pardi ‘grub, caterpillar’ is doing an action)
tharlpa ‘leaf’ (also used for ‘ears’ of a person or animal)
thayi-rna ‘to eat’
ngama-yi ‘is sitting’
Note: in his Diyari Dictionary Reuther gives many specialised expressions involving tharlpa, as in:
mingka tharlpa ‘a [small] opening leading upwards from inside a burrow’ (mingka ‘hole in the ground’)
yawarra tharlpa ‘message that has been sent out in this and that direction, [but only] a portion of which has reached a certain point’ (yawarra ‘word, language, message’)
marna tharlpa ‘upper and lower lips’ (marna ‘mouth’)
Ngayana Diyari Yawarra Yathayilha 