Osu ó:lhtstexwes…. means ‘So they were loading (it)’ or ‘So they were putting it on board’.
Audio: Elizabeth Herrling
This phrase has the following structure:
- osu – This is a general sentence connectector. It is often untranslatable, but here you can translate it as so.
- ó:lhstexw – loading, putting on board. This is the –ing form of ólhstexw. With ó:lhstexw, the vowel o: is slightly longer and has a sharply falling pitch, marked with the colon.
- -es – Here, marks that the subject of the sentence is a ‘third person’ (neither you nor me). In this case, the third person subject is the understood they.
Note: the words for they and it are not explicitly stated, but are just understood from context, as is common in the language (you can say words for these, but Elders commonly drop them in context).
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