el stl’í kw’es…

I want that …

El stl’i kw’es _____ means ‘I want that _____’, as in for example ‘I want that he walks’.

Literally it means: ‘My want (is) that ______’.

Vocabulary and Pronunciation

• El – my – sounds like ULL
• Stl’í – want – sounds like STLEE, except that the t is ‘popped’, by combining with a catch-in-the-throat sound  (‘glottal stop’)
• Kw’es – that – sounds like KWUSS, except that the k is (lightly) ‘popped’.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling
Note: this audio is selected from a longer sentence, covered in the next post

Examples of usage

Here are some examples of how you can use this pattern:

• El stl’í kw’es imexs thutl’o – I want that she walks (i.e. ‘I want her to walk’).
• El stl’í kw’es hikws tel lálém – I want that my house is big (i.e. ‘I want my house to be big’).
• El stl’í kw’els lam – I want that I go (i.e. ‘I want to go’).

Structure notes

The structure of this phrase is as follows:

Note: ‘My’ is often tel.  El is a shorter form of ‘my’, which you use in certain sentence types, especially where ‘my‘ is at the start of the sentence.