 |
| flickr.com |
Esta guiya yo' na måtto! / Håfa tatatmanu'ao nene?
Kao pareho ha' yan åntes / annai guåho'ao mumantiene?
Here I am; I have come! How are you, darling?
Are you the same as before, when it was I who held you?
Ei na inande'! What a flirt! And no lack of self-confidence!
He means to say, "Surely, darling, you regret my absence; you long for my embrace. Needless to say you are worse off now than before, when we were together. But cheer up - I have returned!"
Words had to be shortened to fit them into the melody. Hao becomes 'ao.
Pareho = from the Spanish parejo, which means "even, uniform, neutral, fair." From the Latin par, meaning "equal," as we say in English, "to be on par with someone."
Mantiene = from the Spanish mantener, which, you won't be surprised, sounds very much like the English maintain, meaning "maintain, hold, keep." In all those forms, the word comes from two Latin words "manus" or "hand" and "tenere" or "to hold." A tenet is a belief you hold on to, and comes from the Latin tenere, as well as almost all words ending in -tain (obtain, retain, sustain, contain, etc) and words such as tenant (someone holding a place) or tenor (someone capable of holding the voice) and tenacious (someone who strongly holds onto something). Maintain/mantener mean "to hold in one's hand."
No comments:
Post a Comment