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at full length when speaking of or to the Prince or a member of the Prince’s family, and to his own father and elder brothers. For all other persons the title was Dono, used not with the family name, but with the na or given name. The lower classes use Sama more generally and have for it the contractions sa and tsa.
The favorite word for feeling unwell is yameru: ha ga yameta, atama ga yameta are the only expressions ever heard for ‘I have a tooth-ache,’ a head-ache, &c.’ It is written with the character for itameru 痛 not with that for yamai 病 as given in Dr. Hepburn’s Dictionary.
Amari is especially used in the two phrases amari ii meaning ‘with pleasure’ or simply ‘yes,’ and amari yokambéi ‘that will be the very thing.’
Nambu does duty both for ikutsu and ikura (how many, how much,) and nambu ka for sazo, as Nambu ka o kowakatta beish’! How tired you must be!
There are a few other words which are known, but not much used in Tôkiô, but which are specially affected by the Yonezawa people of all classes:
Oboko, for instance, is almost the only word for children of both sexes.
Samazama and Shuju which in Tôkiô are considered to belong to the book style, replace iro-iro with the meaning ‘various’ ‘all sorts of.’
Zôsa-nai is always used for ‘easy’ to the exclusion of ‘yasashii’ which is never heard.
Itamashii ‘deplorable,’ tawai-nai ‘senseless’ and shôshi ‘pitiful’ are all common; and a coolle makes believe to decline a second cup of saké with the phrase Ora fa o shôshi na!
Kusai (stinking) is used in the locution mi-kusai ‘ugly,’ ‘unpleasing to the sight,’ and sounds to Tôkiô ears singularly forcible and inelegant.
It will of course be understood that in collecting the foregoing words and phrases I have not attempted to exhaust the peculiar expressions of the dialect; but on the
