Li te Sx̲e’óthels, tl’o te ch’áletstel yetl’q’tes te sqwóqwiyel

Li te Sx̲e’óthels, tl’o te ch’áletstel yetl’q’tes te sqwóqwiyel means ‘Thursday it’s the chair he paints green’.

Vocabulary and Pronunciation

• Sx̲e’óthels –Thursday
• tl’o –it is…
• te – the
• ch’áletstel – chair (variant of sch’áletstel)
• yétl’q’t – to paint
• -es – here marks that there is a third person subject (in this case the understood ‘he’)
• sqwóqwiyel – becoming green (a variant of tsqwóqwiyel)

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Sentence structure

The structure of this phrase is as follows:

Note that the subject ‘he‘ is just understood. Because ‘he‘ is a ‘third person’ (neither you nor me), this type of verb requires the –es marker, which marks that there is a third person subject.