So while talking with fatcook about the audiobook, she mentioned Kor and Ajan’s fight in Black Blossom, and since I didn’t know what she was talking about I asked them and got back, “We don’t fight except when we /—/”
At which point I said, “Wait, repeat that?”
Which is how I got a bunch of words about… having fights.
defin – a squabble. A fight that has nothing to do with the topic; the topic is an excuse to let the participants blow off steam caused by small relationship incompatibilities or day-to-day stresses.
This is the sort of thing that happens when you’re grumpy and tired and someone says or does something that bothers you but that you usually ignore because it’s not important, and then you explode, and it doesn’t really matter what you’re fighting about (“The toilet paper is on backwards!”). The reason you’re fighting is because of That Other Stuff. This is different from:
jars - to fight with someone because of big, existing emotional problems.
emejars - a fight caused by big, existing emotional problems between two people.
shejaril - the hollowed-out/queasy feeling of a relationship that has just gone through a big fight.
jarashemeth - peace after sorting through a huge emotional fight/problem
This is the sort of fight where you’re up until 4 AM alternating between crying and yelling at one another, but you dare not go to sleep with it still unresolved. Appropriately, when I say this word I have to grimace to get the last sound out properly; it looks like you’re snarling. Notice that last word contains “emeth,” the word for perspective. I didn’t even notice that ’til just right now. Ha. >.>
kolesh - an argument involving abstractions, conducted logically; a debate.
leshan - to debate
shekolesh - a hypothetical situation built on arguments constructed by reason.
This set of words encompasses the sort of arguing people are supposed to do without emotion. Ai-Naidar seem a lot more invested in the separation of abstractions from relationships, but they do debate things, and such debates can get very—I won’t say “heated” because they wouldn’t. Urgent, though, yes. Shekolesh I’m having a hard time translating. It’s not philosophy and it’s not a hypothetical and it’s not an equation or logical proof, but it’s a little of all those things. It’s sort of a “what if” scenario. If you’d asked the Ai-Naidar to come up with a scenario where, say, our society made sense as a thought exercise, they’d call that thought exercise a shekoleshi. So I guess “thought exercise” will do.
We also have:
tuvil – friction; the kind of irritation caused by two people interacting whose personalities don’t mesh well.
afravil - to make sparks because of friction
Interestingly, the latter word was originally used literally, and is now almost entirely figurative.
There’s also this:
dibin - play-fight/mock-fight; banter
idin – to play-fight someone
This is banter, when you say things that would be mean if said to a stranger but are fine because of who you’re saying them to. ‘You’re joshing me,’ basically.
And the latter leads to:
daridin – to tussle with siblings
daridibin – sibling fighting
Which is sing-sung by children as “dari-daridibin” when they’re watching or tattling…! (“Dari-dari-daridibin” gets really mocking: “You’re fiiiighting fighting FIIIIiiighting!”).
Anyway. None of this is yet in the vocabulary in the wiki. Someone remind me to update it when I’m not falling asleep. -_-
So yes, I suspect what they were saying is “we don’t fight (insert words for emotional stuff/friction/etc) except when we fight (tussle/are having a bad day/are joshing one another).”
