kom
/ko
, pro.you (nonemphatic, plural).
ko
a
ko
ko
mo
er
ker
e
ko
mla
Examples:
> We are completely uninformed because we don't know any information (about that).
> He's quiet and motionless (like a carved doll).
> It's the first time it's rained in a long while.
> Droteo and Toki are quite close or always doing things together.
> Have you walked on the floor of the ocean?
Proverbs:
> Like the kingfisher, chattering while taking to wing.
The kingfisher, a restless, bullying bluebird, may be heard to chatter loudly when flying up from the ground or from a perch. The saying applies to one who suddenly spouts instructions to a group, then leaves, or to a leader at a meeting who impatiently interrupts a discussion with a burst of pronouncements, then ends the meeting.
> Like lightning, a big, unnecessary noise.
Lightning rarely strikes in such a way as to cause serious damage in Palau. May be applied to any unnecessary fuss or oratory at a meeting.
> He's like the road in Ngerebodel (which doesn't go anywhere in particular)
i.e. he's expanding a lot of effort but not getting anywhere. There was once, in the hamlet of Ngerebodl (in Koror, central Palau), reputedly a very fine boulder path which began and ended nowhere in particular. The idiom may describe a person who seems to be working hard toward no apparent objective
> It's like eating reboiled (starchy) food.
Cooked taro will spoil in time, unless it is reboiled (blelekl). Among other applications the saying may pertain to a man who marries, separates, then returns to the same woman; also a man who returns to a former job.
> It's like the birth of a rat with one offspring per mother.
It's something that happens just once, something I put up with only once. According to this saying, the rat bears but one litter. Hence the application "once is enough" about an act that bears no repeating.
More Examples:
> She looks so beautiful with her traditional grass skirt and decorations except her lips look inside out with that lipstick.
> Do you want to have lunch or dinner sometime?
> We were walking fine on the road until a really fast car sped by that abruptly forced us into a ditch.
> It's strange to be married.
> The bench is wobbly so we might fall.

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