Phrase Detail

Say: wemb-ar pil-park

Vowels: Standard - 'a' as in ‘car’ or ‘path’, ‘i’ as in ‘hill’. Variation - 'e' followed by ‘m’ in the same syllable and is not immediately followed by a vowel is long and slightly nasalised.

'Wemba pilpak' is listed in VLaLS (p176) by Hercus as 'don't bang' (said to a child) so it is likely an emotional short hand type order to a child to 'stop making that noise you are making by banging on that ... 'tin' or 'drum' or similar. The reason is that the transitive verb 'pilpa' (to bang) would take the imperative (order to one person) ending 'ak' when the action is being done to some thing or person and the ending 'i' when it is not being done to something. It is bit hard to make a banging noise without banging something so it is reasonable to assume that the banged thing didn't have to be detailed because the context was obvious ie everyone present could see and hear that the annoying child was banging a 'tin' or a 'drum' or 'the table'.

Build - can you think of any other verbs (action words) where combined with 'wemba' and the 'ak' imperative ending would be a good Wamba Wamba order? Write down and practice saying 5 'wemba verb-ak' and 5 'wemba verb-i' sentences.