Chxw xwe’í:t os éwelh qwelsthóx?

How come you never talk to me?

Chxw xwe’í:t os éwelh qwelsthóx? means ‘How come you never talk to me?’

Literally:   you (are) doing.what that never talk.to.me?

Vocabulary and Pronunciation

• chexw – you, talking to one person (this commonly shortens to chxw in fast speech)
• xwe’ít – what is __ doing? what happened? (see xwe’ít, chxw xwe’i:t)
• os – meaning is similar to ‘that‘ (see structure notes below
• ewelh – never
• qwélstexw – to talk to
• -óx – me
• qwelsthóx – talk to me

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling
Note: this audio is selected from a slightly longer phrase, we will cover the full phrase in a later post

Structure notes

The structure of this phrase is as follows:

Notes:

• The meaning of the os is not totally clear, but it appears to have a function similar to English that.
• O is a little ‘helper’ word, which often has no clear translation into English (sometimes it means something like ‘just‘, other times it is untranslatable).
• The -s ending here may indicate that there is an understood third person subject (‘it’), or it may make the last part of the clause a ‘nominal’, giving a literal meaning like ‘(your) never talking to me’.