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le xwá ts’méth’ te yétl’q’tes te lá:léms

Illustration for 'his house becomes blue'

His house becomes blue.

Le xwá ts’méth’ te yétl’q’tes te lá:léms means ‘His house becomes blue‘.

Literally it means ‘(It) becomes blue the paint-job of the house (of him)‘.


Vocabulary and Pronunciation

  • le – an untranslatable ‘auxiliary’ (‘helper’) verb, a reduced form of lamto go
  • xwáto become
  • ts’méth’blue
  • tethe
  • yétl’q’tpaint job (This appears to be the same word as syétl’q’t, without the s-.  The s-, a noun marker, is often variable in use. It could also be a slightly different form of the word.)
  • -sof
  • lá:lémhouse
  • -s – here the –s means ‘of‘, indicating that the house is possessed by understood ‘he


Audio: Elizabeth Herrling


Structure

The structure of this phrase is as follows:

his-house-becomes-blue-structure-2

Note that  ‘his‘ is not overtly expressed—you understand  from it context.


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