Ya’aburnee
2023; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 97; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2023.a901365
ISSN1945-8134
Autores ResumoYa’aburnee Veronica Esposito (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution LEFT: PHOTO COMPOSITE BY SHAYNA POND. SOURCE IMAGES BY NAHIL NASEER AND WOMANIZER ON UNSPLASH.COM [End Page 8] In her new, ongoing column, Veronica Esposito highlights an untranslatable word—its history, its contemporary usage, and why it’s so hard to translate. To begin this new project, Esposito delves into the Arabic ya’aburnee, a commonplace expression of love typically rendered literally in English as “you bury me.” We hear it in a Halsey song and see it in play and poem titles and tattooed on bodies, this word that fills a gap to express a universal experience not reducible to a single English word. Of all the things English does well as a language, it lacks words or phrases that are particularly inspirational when it comes to love and romance. Perhaps that helps explain why English speakers often become entranced by words from other languages that have a particular knack for capturing the rapture and exuberance that profound love can make us feel for another person. A fascinating example of this is the untranslatable Arabic word ya’aburnee, typically rendered literally in English as “you bury me.” A commonplace expression of parental or romantic love, it is at first glance curious—you tell someone you love them by asking that they bury you? The unspoken implication of this word is that love makes life without you so impossible to contemplate that I hope you end up burying me instead of vice versa. Other, less literal translations include “I don’t want to live without you” or “I’d die for you.” The word is attention-grabbing because it sounds so extreme and morbid, as well as for its paradoxical nature: I’m going to express my love for you by referencing the one thing that will sever us forever. The casual juxtaposition of love and death is uncommon in English—we tend to avoid talk of death, and we like to imagine ourselves as having a more innocent and idealistic approach to love. The one big exception—the common marriage vow “till death do us part”—tellingly doesn’t say who will die, and it certainly doesn’t express a wish to be the one who goes first, as does ya’aburnee. It’s more of an afterthought—yes, eventually death will have to part us—whereas ya’aburnee makes death the central focus. In the anglosphere, ya’aburnee also brings to mind the ultimate lovers—Romeo and Juliet—famed, of course, because their love was so powerful that they preferred to die than be apart. Although untranslatable, ya’aburnee has caught on among English speakers both because it fills a gap and because it leans heavily on universals. Really, among those who have been in a lengthy, committed relationship, who hasn’t wondered at some point who will die first? The phrase is also universal for the way it makes “bury me” stand in for death—a very literal, bodily representation of death that leaves no room to ignore the fact of what it really is. Burying the dead is understood by humans across the globe—regardless of culture or developmental level, we all can relate in some way to burying our dead. Similarly, most human societies are familiar with the idealized, lifelong love: our cultural narratives tend to uphold lifelong monogamy as an ideal, and they also tend to have powerful narrative archetypes of the star-crossed lovers whose bond is only severable by death. As a word expressive of love and longing that fills a gap in English, ya’aburnee is similar to the word mamihlapinatapai, from the nearly extinct Yaghan indigenous language once widely spoken in Argentina’s far south, translated by Zoe Baillargeon as “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to begin.” Likely because this word both feels exotic and mysterious, and because it references a delicious moment of romance that most have experienced, it has taken on a life of its own—scores of articles have been written about it, YouTube is full...
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