aodu

[ao'ⁿdu]

gather people together in love for reconciliation

Natügu – 3,700 speakers, Santa Cruz Island, Solomon Islands

Aodu can be analysed as a- (causative) + odu (to gather in friendship).

Aodu is usually initiated by a community or family leader, so that members who are feuding do not just passively agree to get along, but grow to value and love the others and desire for them to be blessed. Aodu involves hearing the other person’s position in the presence of the one who gathers them, who serves as both moderator and mediator.

The Natügu language has a `circumfix' (prefix-suffix combination) nz- + -ngr which converts verbs into nouns. Thus, from odu and aodu we can form nzodungr `friendship' and nzaodungr `loving reconciliation'.

Natügu has 10 vowels. Five of them are represented using the letters a, e, i, o, and u. The remaining five use the letters, c, q, r, x, and z, which have no other use in the language. The sounds of c, q, r, x, and z are something like the vowels of English words caught, cute, curt, cat, and cut. Years ago, speakers of Natqgu made this decision because typewriters did not contain the letters with extra symbols, like â, ü, ö, ä, and ë. This decision makes it easy for people to compose text messages in Natqgu today.

Source: Boerger, Brenda H. (2016). Freeing biblical poetry to sing. Open Theology 2:179-203. Topical issue on Bible Translation. Mark L. Strauss, ed. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/opth-2016-0014, page 198.