Híkw te lá:léms te sqá:qs tútl’o John.

John’s little brother’s house is big.

Híkw te lá:léms te sqá:qs tútl’o John. means ‘John’s little brother’s house is big.’ (literally ‘Big (is) the house of the little brother of the John’).

Vocabulary and Pronunciation

This phrase is a continuation from Híkw te lá:léms te sqá:qs tútl’o. – ‘His little brother’s house is big.’.   In this new phrase, Elizabeth has added John at the end of the phrase.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Structure

The structure of this phrase is as follows:

• Híkw te lá:lém-s te sqá:q-s tútl’o John.
• big the house-of the little.brother-of the John

Note that here tútl’o would not be directly translated into English. Tútl’o can mean he or him, but in this case it is just introducing the name John.

Linguistically, here tútl’o functions as a determiner (like the), rather than a pronoun (like he, him).  In English we do not use determiners before proper names, but in Halq’eméylem you literally say the John in many sentences.