ew léts’es o te sxélches

ew léts’es o te sxélches means ‘his catch is just one’.

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Structure and Vocabulary

This phrase has the following structure:

• ew…o – just (both words can be used by themselves as ways of marking emphasis, but together they mean just)
• léts’es – one – This is based on léts’e, but Elizabeth adds the -s ending, which in this case may mark round things (létses can be used for counting dollars, Indian blankets, or round things)
  

  one

• te – the
• sxélche (also pronounced sxélcha) – catch, what one catches (use this for talking about game or fish that you catch)
  

  hunting catch, what you caught

• -s – here, marks the presence of a possessor who is ‘third person’ (neither you nor me). In this case, the third person possessor is an understood ‘his’.

Note that there is no explicit word for ‘his’ in this sentence, the possessor is just understood from context, as is common in the language.