…mes kweléxwes te sth’óqwi

…mes kweléxwes te sth’óqwi means ‘…to get the fish’.

Literally it means: ‘…(they) come to get the fish’

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Structure and Vocabulary

The structure of this phrase is as follows:

• me – related to the meaning ‘to come’, but here used as an untranslatable auxiliary (‘helper’) verb.
• -s – here marks that that there is a third person subject (neither you nor me). Here, the third person subject is an understood ‘they‘.
• kwélexw – to get, to catch (EH stresses the second syllable, which may be a different form of the verb)
• -es – here, another marker that there is a third person subject (certain verbs require this ending in addition to the other third person subject marker on the auxiliary).
• te – the
• sth’óqwi –fish