Palauan Language Online: Palau Language Proverbs Quiz

Palau Language Proverbs Quiz

QUESTION 1:

Please choose the corrective figurative meaning for this proverb:

The male betelnut handbag (tet), is used till old and worn, then discarded. The idiom applies to a person who lives in his home as though he might move out tomorrow, making no effort to keep the house and yard neat.
i.e. He's indecisive or not clearly taking sides. A person who is "on the fence," changeable and indecisive. The saying may also be applied to a partly westernized Palauan.
The Palauan year, conforming roughly to fall-winter, when the wind blows generally from the west.
The grass skirt in Palau consists of a front and back panel. While being worn, the strands of the skirt may become matted and tangled. To correct this, particularly when sitting down, the woman may run her fingers under and through her skirt, lifting and combing the strands. In so doing the woman affords the spectator a brief, erotic glimpse. The idiom may be applied in answer to a severe critic, asking the critic not to reveal all of the victim's failures. In a related sense, a family member may ask another not to make all of the family problems public.
Used of the people of Ngaraard district, especially Ngebuked villagers, as a reference to cowardice. When the clubhostess system (mongol) was practiced, in which a group of women from one village would be "abducted" (with the consent of village leaders) to serve as hostesses in the men's club of another village, it was customary for the women of Koror to be taken to a men's club in Ngebuked. This involved four trips by the men of Ngebuked past the hostile villages of Aimeliik: (i) to go to Koror to "abduct" the girls at a pre-designated place; (2) to bring the girls "secretly" back to Ngebuked; (3) to take the girls back to Koror for the payment (money payments to the girls' village chief, to the club to which the girls belong, and to the fathers of the more active girls); (4) the final trip home by the men. In each instance, the canoes of Ngebuked would be joined, by prearrangement, by canoes and warriors from Ngeremlengui as an escort past Aimeliik.

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