Raindrops keep falling...

Esha.
These days have been horrible weather-wise. Rain all the time, clouds in the sky. Kazujishans don't talk about weather usually, but when it's really terrible, we do. Everyone I've spoken with lately have complained about the renkahat, which is roughly 'a lot of rain during a long time'. It's still somewhat nice when you are inside, hearing the heavy rain against the window, reading a nice book... and drinking hot chocolate. I'm addicted to hot chocolate. I know the purpose of my blogging is to talk about typical Kazujishan things, not to talk about myself. But hot chocolate is great. (I know quite a few other addicts, too - maybe it is a Kazujishan thing?)

Well, today's topic was... bad weather. Kazujisha has a lot of words regarding rain. Those of the Talevalean religion really love rain - it's considered holy because rain makes crops grow, but it's a bit odd because most of the "everyone's invited" rituals, meetings and such in Talevalean religion are conducted outside. I guess this holy rain thing is the reason why we enjoy talking about rain and have a lot of words for it.

Anyways! Here's a list of some rain-related words in Kazujisha.

monoshikaushe - to rain. General term.
renkahat - a lot of rain, during a long time. Kitashikau is almost the same thing, but it's often used for shorter periods.
keimshikau - snow-rain. Snow and rain in a mix.
anshikau - the first rain of the year, not being...
usmashikau - rain during winter.
sateshikau - a small, sudden downpour ending quickly.
rensateshikau - a big, sudden downpour ending quickly.
hibeshikau - rain from a clear sky (no or few clouds).
kahteshikau - when you are sad and it's raining as if the heaven is crying for you.

Those are the ones I can remember. Monoshikaushe is a quite long word, but most of the time, in informal spoken language we shorten it to shkau. I heard that monoshikaushe was originally the religious term, which in time replaced whatever the normal language used. Of course, that's just what I've heard...

I think I'll write a bit about religious language next time. It's interesting that we use quite different registers for religious and normal language - but it's still not hard to understand or speak! How come? Stay tuned...

Arikea