Moten Words for the Day

kemi /ke̞mi/, noun: “pleasantness, wonderfulness; also as adj. pleasant, wonderful, good”

abal /abal/, noun: “dreadfulness, lousiness; also as adj. dreadful, lousy, bad”

There, feeling better? :)

So, we’ve already seen two ways to translate “good” and “bad” into Moten: vo|sa and slim, which refer to fitness for purpose, and ufan and tlebe, which refer to objective quality. Today, we’re adding two more possible translations, this time referring to “good” and “bad” as simply a matter of opinion.

Kemi and abal are respectively positive and negative statements of opinion, and only opinion. They simply indicate whether someone likes whatever is qualified, or not. They are different from vo|sa and slim in that there is no need to have a purpose in mind in order to like or dislike something, and they are different from ufan and tlebe in that you don’t need to be able to objectively justify your opinion on something. As such, if you state that something is abal, you won’t be expected to explain for what purpose it is, nor will you be expected to justify your statement based on objective qualifications. At most, people will ask you why you are harbouring such an opinion.

To illustrate the difference between these three ways of translating “good” or “bad”, consider an example I gave earlier: that of a chair. A chair is ufan if it’s made of quality wood and built by a master carpenter (for instance). A chair is vo|sa if it sits comfortably and can easily handle your weight. Finally, a chair is kemi if you like it :).

Notice that these three forms of “good” are not necessarily companions. A chair that is ufan can still be slim if it’s uncomfortable. A chair can be both ufan and vo|sa and yet still be abal, if you just don’t like its design. Finally, a chair that is a heirloom from your favourite relative, who specifically donated it to you, can still be kemi, even if it’s both tlebe and slim. All those words refer to specific facets of goodness and badness, which are mostly independent from each other.

With these two, we have the three main pairs of words used to translate “good” and “bad” in Moten. There are others, naturally (just like English has things like “awful”, “fantastic”, “nice”, etc.), but those are the main ones and the most commonly used.

Questions?

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