qwáyel

turn green, turn yellow

Qwáyel means ‘turn green’ or ‘turn yellow’. (In general, many Elders use the same word for ‘green‘ and ‘yellow‘)

Pronunciation

Qwáyel sounds like KWAY-ull, except that instead of a k you say the Halq’emeylem q sound. For the Halq’eméylem q, you touch the back of your tongue all the way back to your uvula.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling, Elizabeth Phillips

-ing form

Qwáyel has a special ‘-ing’ form (what linguists call the ‘continuative’ form) for describing an ongoing action, like this: qwóqwiyel – ‘turning green, turning yellow’ (audio here).

Elders make this type of -ing form by partly doubling (‘reduplicating’) the first part of the word, with some additional changes to the vowels.

Structure and Related words

Qwáyel (turn green, yellow), tsqwá:y (be green, yellow) and tsqwóqwiyel (becoming green, yellow) all come from the same root:  qwá:y.  Qwá:y does not appear as a word by itself, though (it is what linguists call a ‘bound root’, meaning it only appears within larger words).

The -el ending means ‘get to be, become’, and the prefix ts- marks ‘state of’ (for colours).  The differences are subtle, but literally the meanings of the three words are like this:

• tsqwá:y – literally: state of being green/yellow
• qwáyel , qwóqwiyel – literally:  turn green/yellow, turning green/yellow
• tsqwóqwiyel – literally: state of becoming green/yellow

In practice, Elizabeth Herrling appears to use qwóqwiyel and tsqwóqwiyel interchangeably.