Wèlá

Méníshè

Etymology 1

From w- (air class) +‎ èlá.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /we˩la˥/

Noun

wèlá (air class, plural wèláyà)

1. song

   Lúchálèzhì jìrùvónàz ramé wèláyà ènò.

   You made weapons of your songs.

   -Adil (Motherland: Fort Salem, Episode 106)

Etymology 2

From w- (negation) +‎ èlá.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /we˩la˥/

Verb

wèlá

1. plain negative infinitive/imperfective direct evidential of èlá

Creation and Usage Notes

It is an etymological accident that the word for "to not sing" is homophonous with the word for "song". It's nearly impossible to confuse the two in a sentence (too much other stuff in between), but on a page like this, it must seem quite bizarre. Jessie and I decided early on that we'd have something very old and very basic for negation (the proto sound *u), and then separately came up with an etymology for the air class prefix that ended up having the same morphophonological alternation (i.e. [v] before [u], [w] before other vowels, and [u] otherwise). A happy accident that can't properly be captured on this wiki. -David J. Peterson 15:23, 20 September 2020 (PDT)