[Mihalic] bautim, pretim

Fr Patrick Gesch, SVD pgesch at dwu.ac.pg
Mon Jan 10 22:21:36 EST 2005


Just coming from holidays in the Sepik near the River.

bautim:-- "Yumi no ken go long dispela rot, em i bautim ples tais na em i longwe tumas."

It is possible that this speaker was making a neologism, but he is not an English speaker, and was not trying to be funny. The word as I understood it meant, "go raun long".

pretim:-    I continue to run into the use of this expression in the non-transitive sense.

    e.g., "Dispela pikinini i no save pretim dok."
            "Mi wanpela meri mi save pretim bik si."

These statements don't make sense in the transitive meaning. Here the meaning seems to be: pretim = is afraid of.

Olsem, husat i guria taim mi tok, "Jeff i save pretim mi"?

     Pat Gesch.
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