Rupert Uinzaako Chapter 8

äëïöü āēīōū Ĵĵ ĀĒĪŌŪ
"Ā jū ōkë?" [pronounced Are you OK, this is what Rupert's brain processed.]
"Ē?"
"Ā jū ōkë?"
"<I don't understand>". I replied in Altean.
(They speak English here, don't they?)
The "Ā jū ōkë" sayer gave me this really confused look. It was a young man with scruffy chin-length black hair and a green-and white cap.
"Ā jū ōkë?" he tried again.
I told him again that I didn't understand him. In Altean, of course.
He got out his smartphone with a world map on it and shrugged at me. I pointed at Altea.
"Ā, Altea." He sighed, tapped his smartphone some more and showed me the screen.
Google Yamitērē?* Seriously? I'm not sure about here, but in Altea it can be very unreliable.
<Are you being alright?>
Close enough. I know what OK means already.
I wanted to use that app as little as possible, but I typed mīmē into the smartphone and some other stuff.
"I'm fine, I think. I'm just F.I.T."
"F.I.T?", asked the man.
I typed "nakī gā hanikō" in.
"I am frozen in time." I tried again.
He looked even more confused, then took the smartphone back and typed something else in.
<What do you mean you're frozen in time?>
"Frozen in time" is an Altean idiom, isn't it?
Before I could try to explain what I meant by "frozen in time" this strange group of men hoisted me up and walked me away from there.
"Dūlē", I thanked the boy as I turned my back, and gave him a kürjē, in which he looked rather pissed off.
(Oh poop foreigners tend to get confused and not like kürjēs, don't they?)
The men started saying cross stuff as well.
"Naisēmē!" I tried to tell them. "<I don't understand!>"
They said other stuff to me as well, which sounded scary, but I still couldn't tell what they were saying.
"Naisēmē!

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Cultural Notes

  • Google Yamitērē= Google Translate.
  • Who remembers Chapter 6? The word "hanikō" was mentioned there as well.
    The thing that Rupert typed in and got translated as "F.I.T" was "engāhā", which is a slang way of saying "nakī gā hanikō", (en=N, gā=G, hā=H) which means frozen in time.

  • A kürjē (kuu-ri-ay) may be a typically Altean gesture that dates back as far as the 1200s, but it's basically a Nazi salute without the "Heil Hitler". It implies something along the lines of "May you go to Heaven".
    There is also a dōbīkürjē, in which you raise your arm straight up and of course cause less offence, but it's reserved for when the receiver has done something really good to you, such as saving your life, and Alteans don't like it when that gesture is used lightly.
End