tl’o te ew sqáqs te John te swíweles

that boy is John’s LITTLE BROTHER

tl’o te ew sqáqs te John te swíweles means ‘that boy is John’s LITTLE BROTHER’, with emphasis on ‘little brother’.

Note the presence here of the little word ‘ew‘. This word doesn’t translate into English. It’s function is to put special emphasis on the following word, here emphasizing LITTLE BROTHER (in contrast to someone else).

Pronunciation

• tl’o – it is…
• te – the
• ew – this word does not translate into English, it puts special emphasis on the following word (among other uses)
• sqáq – younger sibling
• -s – here marks that a ‘third person’ (not me or you) possesses the noun. Roughly translates as English ‘of’
• swíweles – boy, young man

Note: in fast speech te ew comes together to sound like tu. It is ‘correct’ to write it either as te ew or as tu.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Structure

The structure of this phrase is as follows:

The little word ew has several functions in the language, but here it is used to put special emphasis on the following word, i.e. contrasting ‘little brother’ with someone else. In the context of the full story, she says “This is John, and this is John’s LITTLE BROTHER.”