Description:

The term 'ema' means 'friend' and is also the base term to derive relatively casual but typically exclusive sexual relationships.

'Ema' itself can also be euphemistically used to refer to one's signifcant other when trying to be delicate, but typically does not have a sexual connotation. When used with intrinsic gender prefixes, lijéma and cema for girlfriend and boyfriend, respectively, it does have an explicitly sexual connotation.

To convey the idea of 'friend who is a girl', the separated modiifer forms like 'lijy ema', 'friend who is a girl', should be used instead. One could distance this further by saying 'na ema su se lijy an', literally, 'friend who is female'.

'Ema' is a common polite address head term as wel. It has a similar connotation of social equality as 'sepu', 'cousin', but is more intimate and friendly. It is still more distanced than omitting a polite address head term altogether.

As a verb, 'ema' is a transitive skurun verb meaning 'to make friends', or 'to add as a friend on social media', or 'to treat like a friend'. It takes an ergative subject who is the initator and an absolutive object who is the one with whom the relationship is formed. This is also used in an antipassive pali form with a sense like 'be friends with' where the subject is in the absolutive case and the ones one of friends with are exposed obliquely using the null preposition, placing them in the nominative case. Examples: 

Ja Can te ema a Mari.

John is friending Mary [on social media] 

A Can se ema na Mari.

John is friends with Mary.