Archive | Stories

Xwelítem is the word for ‘white person’ or ‘European’.

Stá means ‘to live,  to stay (at a place). For example Li te Ts’elxwéyeqw kw’els stá – ‘I live(d) in Chilliwack’.

Osu ó:lhstexwes i te kyó li te Wólich means ‘They (were) loading it on the car(s) at Wahleach’‘

O:lhstexwes i te kyó means ‘They (were) loading it on the car(s)’. ‘They‘ and ‘it‘ are both understood from context.

Osu ó:lhtstexwes…. means ‘So they were loading (it)’ or ‘So they were putting it on board’.

Lhí:lhets’els á:lhtel te x̲pá:y means ‘They (were) cutting cedar’.

Lhí:lhets’els á:lhtel means ‘They (were) woodcutting’. (The ‘were‘ is just understood from context.)

X̲pá:y means ‘cedar’. You use it to refer to the wood, not to a whole cedar tree (for a cedar tree you  use a related word: x̲páyelhp).

Lhí:lhets’els means ‘to do woodcutting’. You use this to talk about the kind of activity that one does for a while, such as for a job.

Lhí:ts’et means ‘to cut (it)’. You can use it to talk about cutting any kind of object (wood, cloth, vegetables, etc.).