Schechewót te John te lámes há:we.

John is skilled at hunting.

Schechewót te John te lámes há:we means’John is skilled at hunting’.

A literal translation would be ‘John is smart/skilled if/when he goes hunting’.

Vocabulary and Pronunciation

schechewót – smart, skilled  –  This is a variant of schewót.
…lámes há:we – if/when he goes hunting
háwe – to hunt

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Structure notes

The structure of this phrase is as follows:

• The -es ending in this case indicates that ‘he‘ (or ‘she‘ or ‘it‘) is doing the action.
• Speakers use -es for ‘he‘ (or ‘she‘ or ‘it‘) to talk about possibilities or ‘when’, so you can translate it as ‘if when he…‘
• The second te in this sentence is not translatable into English. Literally it means the, but here it is used more like ‘if/that’.