Osu Lhq’átses qesu le xwá tsxwíkw’ te yétl’q’tes te lá:léms means ‘Friday his house becomes grey’.
Literally it means ‘So Friday and.so (it) becomes grey the paint.job of the house (of him)‘.
Vocabulary and Pronunciation
- osu –so (this is a general sentence connector, often not translatable into English)
- Slheq’átses –Friday (Elizabeth Herrling says this Lhq’átses, without the initial s– and with the e dropped. The s– prefix marks nouns, and is often variable. )
- qesu –and so
- le – an untranslatable ‘auxiliary’ (‘helper’) verb, a reduced form of lam – to go
- xwá – to become
- tsxwíkw‘ – grey
- te – the
- la – an untranslatable ‘auxiliary’ (‘helper’) verb, also a reduced form of lam –to go
- yétl’q’t –paint job (this appears to be a variation of syétl’q’t, again dropping the s-)
- -(e)s – here, of
- te – the
- lá:lém – house
- -s – here the –s means ‘of‘, indicating that the house is possessed by understood ‘he‘
Audio: Elizabeth Herrling
Structure
The structure of this phrase is as follows:
No comments yet.