Olsu la tés kw’e Lhq’á:lets

Olsu la tes kw’e Lhq’á:lets means ‘So I reached Vancouver’, or ‘So I got to Vancouver’.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Structure

The phrase consists of these elements:

• olsu – so I – osu is a common sentence connector, similar to English ‘so‘. In this case, the -l alone indicates ‘I‘, and goes ‘inside’ osu. You can also use the full form –tsel for I, but Elders use –l in certain contexts, including this combination with osu.
• la – an untranslatable auxiliary (‘helper’) verb, related to the meaning to
• tés – to get to, to reach
• kw’e – the – used for places and things distant from the place of speaking. Note that the equivalent of ‘the‘ is required even with names, in most sentence patterns in the language, so literally you say ‘the Vancouver‘, or ‘the Mary‘.
• Lhq’á:lets – Vancouver