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I once had to ask a friend whose first language is English, if there is one word to convey 'feeding someone a liquid'. Because one of my friends asked me and I
by chanux 6y ago
I once had to ask a friend whose first language is English, if there is one word to convey 'feeding someone a liquid'. Because one of my friends asked me and I didn't know.
In Sinhala[1], my mother tongue, there's a word for that. Povanava (poh-vur-nuh-var) පොවනවා.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_language
- Sharlin 6y agoIn Finnish as well: juottaa is formed from the verb juoda, ”to drink”, but interestingly it is just a case of a general grammatical construction that allows one to turn any verb from ”to do something” to ”to make/have one to do something”. You can even apply it recursively to verbs thus formed, so, for example, juotattaa would mean ”to have someone else feed someone/something liquid”! In principle the grammar allows arbitrarily long constructions, but in practice double applications are already rare although perfectly understandable.