te kyós te sqáqs

his little brother’s car

Te kyós te sqáqs means ‘his little brother’s car’.

Literally it means: ‘the car of the younger sibling of (him)’.  ‘Him’ or ‘his’ is implied from context.

Vocabulary and pronunciation

• te – the.
• kyó – car
• -s – you use this to mark that a third person (not me or you) possesses the object
• sqáq – younger sibling (can be brother or sister, depending on context)

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling
Note: this section has been cut from a larger phrase, and partly edited. See later posts for the full audio for this section.

Structure

The structure of this phrase is as follows:

Note that the phrase does not contain any direct word that tells you it is ‘his‘ (or ‘her‘) brother. Rather, the –s ending on sqáq indicates that someone (a third person, so not ‘you‘ or ‘me‘) possesses the brother.  Speakers understand ‘his‘ (or ‘her‘, or some other third person possessor) from context.

Note:  if you want, you can also specify ‘his‘ directly, using tútl’o (=’he‘, or ‘him‘, or ‘his‘), like this:  te kyós te sqáqs tútl’o – his little brother’s car.  However, in normal speech speakers will often just say the shorter form, as above.