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

Monday his house becomes blue.

Yilawelhát qesu le xwá ts’méth’ te yétl’q’tes te lá:léms means ‘Monday his house becomes blue’.

Literally it means ‘Monday and.so becomes blue the paint-job of the house (of him)’.

Vocabulary and Pronunciation

• Yilawelhát –Monday
• qesu –and so
• le – an untranslatable ‘auxiliary’ (‘helper’) verb, a reduced form of lam – to go
• xwá – to become
• ts’méth’ – blue
• te – the
• yétl’q’t – paint job (this appears to be a variant of syétl’q’t)
• -s – of
• lá:lém – house
• -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: