llakichina

[ʎaki'ʧina]

1. make someone feel tender emotions including love, sadness, or empathy, e.g. to make someone love someone/something so much that it makes it them sad, or to love someone/something so much that it hurts

2. a genre of traditional songs that can inspire such feelings

Amazonian Kichwa – 60,000 speakers, Ecuador

Derived from adding a the causative morpheme -chi to the verb llakina, to love / to be sad. The notions of love and sadness are intricately intertwined in this language.

One may feel llakichina for not just other people but also for infants and animals. An infant or baby animal may induce llakichina as its relatively pathetic and helpless state – being unable to care for itself – may make one feel sad and love at the same time. See the following citation for more information:

Nuckolls, J. B., & Swanson, T. D. (2018). Respectable uncertainty and pathetic truth in Amazonian Quichua-speaking culture. In J. Proust & M. Fortier (Eds.), Metacognitive Diversity: An Interdisciplinary Approach (pp. 171–192). https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198789710.001.0001

Source: Nuckolls, J. B., & Swanson, T. D. (2020). Amazonian Quichua language and Life: Introduction to grammar, ecology, and discourse patterns from Pastaza and Upper Napo Speakers. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Credits: Tod D. Swason, Janis B. Nuckolls, Alexander Rice.