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> Narrow was our birth as humans. The saying defines life as a confined, perilous journey, symbolized by the painful narrowness of the birth canal. Generally applied to the trials of life, or sometimes by a parent to a child that does not want to do his chores. |
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> You're like the Ngcheangel banana (meduch a ngerel). You're all talk and no action). |
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> Don't be like the man from Ngerchemai who lost both the turtle and the canoe. Don't bite off more than you can chew...don't be selfish. |
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> Without looking afield, it was cut down behind the house. From the folk tale concerning Mesubed Dingal, the inventor of the Palauan kite (see also No. 73). After his wife had been kidnapped, he constructed a kite using feathers from all the birds of Palau and he needed also wood from an Edebsungel tree to fashion the body of the bird-kite. After looking all over Palau and being on the point of giving up, he found the tree he needed behind his own house. The saying may be applied to anyone who does things the hard way, or who goes far afield to find something which is close at hand. |
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> Like the name of the community house at Ngerekabesang: "Buttressed." At Ngerekabesang in Koror (central Palau) there is a community house (bai) called Telkakl, which means "to buttress" or "to be buttressed." Some of the older bai in Palau were thus supported with beams from the ground to the eaves, and the implication has been added that a bai so supported must be very full of important possessions. This idiom is used of a person who is wealthy, or of one's self, meaning that one has cash on hand. |
