06 March 2010

on 'unsikou' (grateful)



My little brother (well, he is 19 :)) suddenly realized this morning that the Dusun's 'pounsikou' (used to mean 'thank you') actually has the root 'unsikou' which more or less refers to 'grateful feeling'. Excitedly he told me that in some of the Dusun dialects he knows, people use 'kounsikou' to say 'thank you'. And that people say 'nounsikou' when somebody made them grateful. Well done, brother...you are finally having a Dusun language awareness. It is indeed interesting that just from one root word a lot of meanings can be expressed:

1. munsikou (being grateful)
2. minunsikou (was grateful)
3. ounsikou (is happy, grateful, thankful)
4. nounsikou (is made happy, grateful, thankful- often unexpectedly)
5. pounsikou/kounsikou (thank you)
6. unsikoho (be thankful- normally used in command)
7. mongunsikou (thanking someone)
8. mingunsikou (thanking someone over and over again)

...and so on and so forth.

Dusun is a rich language I have to say...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

wow...what an amazing word, thanks for posting this info. It's great. I am very new to learning Dusun and never realized pounsikou has so many varieties!

ounsikou