Saturday his house becomes yellow.
T’eqw’ótem qesu le xwa tsqwá:y te syétl’q’tes te lá:léms means ‘Saturday his house becomes yellow’.
Literally it means ‘Saturday and.so (it) becomes green/yellow the paint-job of the house (of him)’.
Note that tsqwá:y means both ‘green‘ and ‘yellow‘.
Vocabulary and Pronunciation
- T’eqw’ótem –Saturday Note: Here the Elder is using a variant form of T’óqw’tem – Saturday. Both forms are based on teqw’ót – to cut (it) [of string]
- qesu –and so
- le – an untranslatable ‘auxiliary’ (‘helper’) verb, a reduced form of lam – to go
- xwá – to become
- tsqwá:y – green, yellow
- te –the
- syétl’q’t –paint.job
- te – the
- 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:
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