Word: iks
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...first, the words that rolled so precisely off the pronouncer's tongue ("All-right-y. Yours is an old spelling-bee favorite, the study of fishes: ik-thee-olo-gee") seemed a cinch. By lunchtime. Mrs. Wilford White, the chief judge, had rung her bell only 16 times to signal the fall of contestants. But after lunch, the pronouncer began to give out words that even he admitted he could not define...
After that, there are a few instructions about gender (if jeval is horse, omjeval is stallion and jijeval is mare), ordinal numbers (balid is first, balsid is tenth), and adjectives (add ik to noun stems). Finally there are about a hundred words of vocabulary. Samples...
...names of everyday things: banana, fire, water, house, etc. It was tough going. They found that the only difference between many words was the presence or absence of a glottal stop (written ' in the phonetic system devised by Townsend). For example, 'ino ka 'okë 'ikën means "The jaguar is at the other side of the river." Pronounced without the stop before the third word, the same sounds mean "The jaguar has come." Townsend's team also found that the Cashibos could put the Germans to shame with multisyllabled words. In Cashibo...