Comments on esun

[jan Ote]

[rdmiller3]

Any language invented by a woman must of course have some way to say "to shop".

(Just kidding! I couldn't resist.)

[jan-ante]

sina toki e ijo pona

sopping is an essential part of american life cycle:

ona li lape
ona li lawa e tomo tawa
ken la ona li pali
ona li lawa e tomo tawa
ona li kama jo e ijo mute lon tomo pana ijo / ona li tawa Esun
ona li lawa e tomo tawa
ona li lape

mi pilin e ni: nimi Esun li lon ala la toki li ike tawa jan Mewika

[janKipo]

Two brief notes
1 Though the reading for 'esun' is, inter alia, 'shop', the underlying notion seems to be 'trading' not 'shopping'. So, think first of all of a bazaar, not a mall, and then see how much of that carries over into the world in which you live (and how little of it is in stock trading, for example).
2. 'tenpo esun' doesn't have to be seven days, but let us take it as that conventionally. How do we know when seven days are up if we can't count above two? Well, for one thing, God hung the moon just for that purpose (it says in holy books of the west and middle east): the visible halfway point between full and new and again between new and full comes to average out at about seven days -- and if the market is earlier or later by a day, what the heck. Folks in Lao-lao- land notice stuff like that (and can actually see the moon and some stars).

[Sonja]

[Sonja]

[jan Ote]

[jan Ote]

[jan Ote]

[janKipo]

pakala a! jaK Ote o, the event market or bazaar (or souk or ...) is older and more basic than the store, which evolved with cities (OK, villages) much later than the event and consciously (at first anyhow) as fixing the event in one place and then as ongoing rather than episodic. Even in the early stores (better markets, since stores were storage before they were markets) the mode was still barter (and still is in probably most parts of the world).