Men and Women in the Somali Narrative Folklore

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The paper for the Buranbur conference in San Diego — 3 March 2007.

I am going to remind you of some Somali proverbs about women, their role in the traditional society and their relationships with men. Each proverb carries a message of the Somali ancestors to the present generation of the Somalis. Some of them are very funny and I hope you will enjoy them.

According to the following proverb, men are desperate about women. They say: Naago ama u samir, ama ka samir — Either suffer from women or suffer without them. But men understand that they badly need them: Naag waa belaayo loo baahan yahay — Woman is a disaster one cannot do without.

On Some Peculiarities of the Somali Language, Proverbs and Folktales

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The paper for the Buranbur conference in San Diego — 3 March 2007.

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Somali is a very rich language from the point of view of phonetics, syntax and vocabulary. In its “Northern variant” (maxaad tidhi) it is a tonal accent language. The main classes of words in Somali are nouns and verbs.

Some words with attributive meanings belong to the class of verbs: dheer — to be long, cad — to be white, etc. The majority of words with adverbial meaning belong to the class of nouns: hoos-ta — bottom, si-da — mode, mean.

San-Diego on Kapchits.Online

Men and Women in the Somali Narrative Folklore

On Some Peculiarities of the Somali Language, Proverbs and Folktales

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