Os lhéq’ su me chémetes á:lhtel mi te stl’ép.

Os lhéq’ su me chémetes á:lhtel mi te stl’ép means ‘They used to pack it down’ or ‘‘They would carry it to the bottom’.
Here ‘it‘ refers to the pitchwood from the mountains.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Vocabulary and Structure

This phrase has the following structure:

Vocabulary:

• ósu is a general sentence connector, often untranslated but roughly meaning ‘so’, or ‘and so’
• lhéq’ literally means ‘always’, but here carries the sense of ‘used to always’ or simply ‘used to’ (you can also add the past tense marker –elh, to make lhéq’elh – ‘used to’ (past tense). See os lhéq’ su.
• me – this is an untranslatable ‘auxiliary’ (‘helper’) verb, that indicates that the action takes place coming towards the place of speaking. It is related to emí – ‘to come’
• chémet – ‘to pack on back, carry on back’
• -es – this ending marks that the verb has a ‘third person’ subject (in this case ‘they’). A ‘third person’ is someone other than the speaker or hearer. This ending is required on certain verbs, when they have third person subjects.
• á:lhtel – they, them
• te – the
• stl’ép – depth, bottom