Say What?

Something I have come to love about the Kwong people is how they use language to illustrate their thoughts and feelings. I have been learning basic Kwong from Luk, one of the pastors at the Kwong church here and one of Mark and Diane's good friends. Although I can understand a decent amount of what people are saying now, sometimes I get thrown for a loop. The language has a rich use of idioms, and a lot of times they make no sense to my western mind as to what they mean. One, for instance, that I learned while sitting in on the translation of the book of John, is the phrase for "eternal God" in Kwong. In order to say that God is eternal, the Kwong say "he sits with his eyes". Similarly, when translating that someone is still alive, the Kwong would say "he still has his eyes". There is always an exception though. In the book of John, there is a story of a man who comes to Jesus to ask him to heal his son who is sick at home. Jesus tells him to go home and that his son will be well. As he is on his way home, his servants meet him and say, "your son is alive". In Kwong, instead of saying "he still has his eyes", apparently in this case "he still has his mouth". Don't ask me why, and they won't give you a reason either, but little things like that are why Mark and Diane never translate without the help of at least 2 Chadians. Another interesting fact is that, even though the Kwong language has significantly less words, the book of Luke in English is 25,000 words, and the book of Luke in Kwong is 40,000 words.
Sometimes there are words in English that don't quite have a good translation in Kwong, but other times there is just the word. For instance, in recent past the Kwong had a tradition that when a child was sick, they would bring a goat, rest the child's forehead on the goat, then kill the goat (sounds a little bit like the old testament, huh?). That word, kilinye, is about as close as you get in Kwong to the word "atonement" in English. It probably actually means more to the Kwong since they still witness animals and goats being killed on a regular basis. It brings the atonement of Christ's blood to life in a way that the Kwong understand.
Another neat thing in the Kwong language is that there are phrases or sounds that can be added in that don't translate to anything in English, but give the preceding sentence or phrase a certain meaning. For instance, when saying it is lightning, the Kwong say "Kumoyn bilaayye bic bic" which translates directly to "God made it flash, beech beech". Another one that you hear a lot is "krabb krabb krabb" which is added when something is done "just so" or very exactly. Depending on the emphasis intended, it could be repeated 4 or 5 times, very rapidly. Another one is if you don't forgive someone very quickly, you "let your stomach cool off, oyn oyn". No idea what that means. It throws me off guard because usually the sounds have an extra emphasis and they don't follow the phonological patterns of the rest of the language, and sometimes they can sound very funny to an English-speaker's ears. All the same, I don't think I will learn very many while I'm here, but it is fun to hear them in conversation.