This is (another) partial repost from Tumblr, but it’s relevant to the past few Epiphany episodes — a proverb came up there that is extremely important to how the Tveshi view class and social position.
Tveshi is spoken in a society that is highly traditionalist and that values the family above all else. However, the society has excellent social services, and there is a sense that powerful families are only powerful for a short period of time before they decline.
One needs to understand that for their societies, many families are centuries or millennia old, at least in surname. They go through highs and lows. The wealth inequality rate is quite low, too. The wealthy only have 10x as much as the poorest.
Thaukinị ni sėis kouria håge å pė sålotha sosejaluyio sejathopu helia ića diråhi fepu.
An earthquake does not care if it rumbles beneath the house of a great family or a humble one.
The ė is just to ensure that people pronounce the schwas at the ends of words; the å is an /ɒ/. Th and s are always voiceless þ and s.
Thaukinị is a natural-gender noun that means “earthquake.” It takes the pronoun pė (given to nouns describing aspects of the natural world, Class N) and the reflexive N-class pronoun sėis.
Akouriait is a complex Tveshi verb that technically means, “to fashion.” Here, it is being used in the phrase sėis kouria håge, which means “fashions itself remorse.” This is the way that emotions and states of being are assigned to a subject. To say that something is remorseful, thaukinị va hågi, would be extremely informal and impolite.
Soseja is a compound word from so (house) and sejatho (family). It refers to the matriarchal seat of a family, or the family home in which the matriarch resides.
Family, sejatho, takes the noun class requiring the pronoun fė.
Helia ića diråhi fepu literally means “or one humble of family.”