…telí kw’etha ahíw

…telí kw’etha ahíw means ‘…from upriver‘.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Structure and Vocabulary

This phrase has the following structure:

• telí – from
• kw’etha – there (this is for places distant from where you speak; for nearby places you would say tetha
• ahíw – upriver

Note:

One interpretation of the sentence is that Elizabeth first says ‘there’, and then adds ‘upriver’ to clarify, as in ‘…from there—upriver’.

However, it could also be that kw’etha is being used as the determiner, and Elizabeth is just pausing (which is not uncommon, at least for her)  between the determiner and the noun.