Osu éwelh qwà:l the stó:les.

So his wife never spoke.

Osu éwelh qwà:l the stó:les. means ‘So his wife never spoke’.

Literally:  so never spoke the wife.of (him)

Vocabulary and Pronunciation

• osu – so (this is a general sentence-connector)
• éwelh – never (this is based on éwe – no, not. The -elh in other uses marks past tense).
• qwà:l – to speak
• the – the (Elizabeth Herrling sometimes uses the for females, other elders would use te for the here)
• stó:les – wife

Note: ‘his‘ is not stated explicitly, but you understand it from the context of the story.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Structure notes

The structure of this phrase is as follows:

Notes:

• There is probably a possessive –s ending added onto the end of stó:les. Elders put this –s ending onto words that are possessed, even if the possessor (in this case ‘his‘) is just understood.
• However, since stó:les ends in –s, that would give two s‘s in a row (ss), and in such cases the two –s‘s just combine together into one, as shown in the diagram.