Osu ó:lhstexwes i te kyó li te Wólich.

Osu ó:lhstexwes i te kyó li te Wólich means ‘They (were) loading it on the car(s) at Wahleach’‘

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Structure

The phrase consists of these elements:

• osu – This is a general sentence-connector, often untranslatable, but sometimes you can translate it as so
• ó:lhstexw – to load (this is the –ing form of ólhstexw)
• -es – here, marks that there is a third person subject (someone other than you or me). The subject in this case is the understood ‘they’
• i – This word has a number of uses in the language. Here the Elder uses it as a preposition. Used as a preposition, i can mean ‘in’, ‘at’, or ‘on’.
• te – the
• kyó – car (here Elizabeth is referring to a railway car). The word is singular in form, but singulars can have a plural interpretation in the language.
• li – similar in meaning to i above, a general marker of spatial location (among other uses for this item)
• te – the
• Wólich – Wahleach (a place name)