nepatia Re: [Nahuat-l]

Matthew Montchalin mmontcha at oregonvos.net
Thu Oct 26 22:36:53 UTC 2006


Is nepatia one of the reflexive forms of the verb patia, to cure
itself?

The other day I was going through the grocery store, and I was on
the right hand side of the aisle, checking out the shampoos and hair
conditioners.  On my left, however, coming up my way, there was a
woman with a baby in her cart, and another kid walking along beside
her, and as they were going past me, they were going past the place
where the aspirin, cold medicines and cough drops were.  The kid ran
up to the cold medicines and grabbed a box of Ludens Lemon Cough
Drops but the mom took it out of her hand and said, "Nepatia!" and
so, in a word, put it back on the shelf.

When I went home, I looked the word up in Karttunen's Dictionary,
and *think* she had told her kid that, in a single utterance, the
purchase was unnecessary because the problem would take care of
itself:  "it cures itself" - 3rd person singular indicative (active)
present, with the ne- prefix denoting the reflexive voice, more or
less. (I had spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out if it
were some kind of 1st person singular prefix, but eventually decided
against it.)

Did I translate it right?

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