tl’o kw’e le ew í:tet o

Tl’o kw’e le ew í:tet o means ‘It’s like (they’re) just sleeping’.

The ‘they‘ and ‘are‘ are just understood from context. A literal translation would be: ‘It is (as if) that (they’re) just sleeping’.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Vocabulary and Structure

This phrase has the following structure:

Vocabulary:

• tl’o – it is
• kw’e – can mean the or that, but here a better translation might be ‘as if’
• le – this is an untranslatable ‘auxiliary’, often used with third person subjects (here the understood ‘they‘) It my be a reduced form of lam – to go.
• ew … o – just… (Together, these two little words mean ‘just‘. Another example would be ew swíyeqe o – just a man. Both words are used in other ways, but in combination they give the meaning ‘just…’.)
• í:tet – sleeping (see ítet)