Tl’o kw’e le ew í:tet o, kw’áy kw’ses kwíyx̲thets

Tl’o kw’e le ew í:tet o, kw’áy kw’ses kwíyx̲thets means ‘It’s like (they’re) just sleeping, (they) can’t move’.

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)
• kw’ay – can’t, (it is) impossible
• kw’es – that
• -es – here, marks (‘agrees with’) an (understood) third person subject (someone other than you or me). In this sentence the understood third person subject is ‘they‘
• kwíyx̲thet – to move oneself
• -s – this –s again marks the presence of the (understood) third person subject.