Yewál kw’as la kw’íyeqel lam te smámelet

Yewál kw’as la kw’íyeqel lam te smámelet means ‘First you climb to the mountains‘.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Vocabulary and Structure

This phrase has the following structure:

Vocabulary:

• Yewál – first
• Kw’as – (that) you, (it is that) you
• Kw’íy – to climb, to rise up
• Kw’íyeqel – to mountain climb, rock climb
• La – ‘auxiliary’ verb, often untranslatable, associated with the meaning ‘go‘ (probably a reduced form of lam, see next point)
• Lam – often means go, but here translates as to, as in to the mountains.
• Te – the
• Smámelet – mountain(s) (also means ‘small rock, little rock‘)

Note: kw’as literally means ‘that you’, but in this case it translates just as ‘you‘.