[Mihalic] bautim, pretim

[Nancy Sullivan]

Fr Pat: I've heard this use of 'pretim' alot around Madang, for the past
couple of years. Just tonight I suggested painting a lizard for my
granddaughter and her mother said, 'Nogat--em bai pretim em!'
Poretim/pretime seems to be 'to scare' as well as 'to fear.' ---Nancy
Sullivan
  -----Original Message-----
  From: mihalic-bounces at anu.edu.au [mailto:mihalic-bounces at anu.edu.au]On
Behalf Of Fr Patrick Gesch, SVD
  Sent: Monday, 10 January 2005 6:22 AM
  To: Mihalic List
  Subject: [Mihalic] bautim, pretim


  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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