Eenantowash!

"Speak same!"

Lesson 3

You are making excellent progress. How is the pronunciation coming along? It does take some practice to get used to the mixture of consonants and vowels that is different to English.

In this lesson we are going to learn significantly more about the language and here, as well as in the next lesson, more about the people who spoke it.

I want to teach you about noun possession, that is, a noun which is owned. For example. in English, 'my knife'. In order to do so, we must first know about pronouns.

The Pronominal Prefix

In Wikipedia, a pronoun is described as a word or form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase. In the case of noun possession, we specifically need to know the personal possessive determiners.

In English, the personal determiners correspond to the personal pronouns I, you, he, she, we, you, they, respectively and the personal possessive determiners are: my, your, his/her, our, your and their.

Although in English we differentiate between sexes, him or her, there is no difference in our language. The personal pronoun is the same for both. Remember, gender for us is animate or inanimate. Thus he/she refers to animate objects and therefore could be a person, an animal or other animate object.

Our language also has these pronouns but includes an additional one, not seen in English. When we speak to someone about "Our house", we do not say whether "our" includes the person/persons being spoken to, or not. It is left to the context of the sentence, current, previous or following, to focus as to who "our" includes. For example, if you were speaking to your family (the ones who live in the house with you) and said, "Our roof has a leak", You would be using the Inclusive form of "our" as you include your family, the ones being spoken to, as the possessors of the house. If you said to a stranger "Please come to our house", you would be using the Exclusive form, as the person to whom you are speaking is not a member of the family. It is one of the nice features of our Woodlands language that it is much more precise in its usage.

The possessive determiners are used as a prefix to the noun which is possessed. Instead of the fancy name, I will simply refer to them now as "pronominal prefix".

Here is the list of pronominal prefixes:-

The second letter of the prefix, the |u| is pronounced "-uh-", similar to the |a| in the English word "about". The word (noun in this case) to which the pronominal prefix attaches, is called the stem.

Domestic animal (NA) → 'netasu' - this word is termed the noun-stem.

Using the appropriate prefix you can apply the appropriate possession to the nouns you have learned in this and previous lessons.

Phoenetic rules when attaching a pronominal prefix

There are some effects at the point of the join of prefix and stem that you need to know about, particularly the third person prefix his/her/their. These are due to phonetic changes when certain letters come together. This might seem a little much right now, but please persevere. Like all languages, if you want it to be correct and understood by others, you need to have it sound as it should.

General rules

• If the stem begins with a consonant, double the consonant.
  nu-nat8tomuhteaonk → nunnat8tomuhteaonk → 'my question'


• If the stem begins with a vowel, add a |-t-| between the prefix and stem.
  nu-onkqueekh8 → nuttonkqueekh8 → 'my hat'.
  
  Notice that the |-t-| has become |-tt-| because of the previous rule as the |t| is a consonant.

Special rules

• If the stem begins with |p, k, or m| AND the the pronominal prefix will be |wu-| (it's third person), THEN the |w| of the prefix is dropped so the prefix becomes only |u-|.
  pummetuonk → 'posterity' becomes uppummetuonk → 'his posterity', not wuppummetuonk


• If the noun stem begins with |w-| then we have to look more closely at the beginning of the stem.
  
  
  • If the stem initial |w-| is NOT followed by a |-u-|, then:-
    
    
    • The addition of the prefix will result in prefix + |w-|. This combination of the |u| of the prefix with the |w| of the stem, results in the special sound, |8|, pronounced "oo" as in 'mood', and this special character is written instead of the |u+w| combination.
      
      So then:-
    
    
    • The first and second person prefixes become |n8-| and |k8-| respectively.
      k8skannemuneog> → 'your seeds'
    
    
    • The third person prefix simply becomes |8-| (the initial |w| is lost).
      8wadtauatonkqussuonk → 'his voice'
      [wadtauatonkqussuonk: |wu-| + |-w-| + wadtauatonkqussuonk becomes w8wadtauatonkqussuonk, |u +w| becomes |8| then the remaining, initial |w-| is dropped becoming 8wadtauatonkqussuonk]
  
  
  • If the stem has initial of |wu-| then:-
    
    
    • For first and second person, everything proceeds as before, the first and second person prefixes become |n8-| and |k8-| respectively followed by the w-initial stem.
      [NI. wunnepog → 'leaf' : nu + wwunnepog, the stem initial |w| is doubled and the |u| from the prefix combines with the first |w| of the stem to make |8| - n8wunnepog]
    
    
    • For third person, we convert the |u+w|, where the prefix joins the stem, to |8| and drop the prefix |w|, but in addition the stem initial |wu-| is also dropped.
      8nnepog → 'her/his leaf'
      [NI. wunnepog → leaf : wu+wwunnepog - double the stem initial consonant after which the |u+w| combine to |-8-| - w8wunnepog, the initial |w-| is dropped as is the |wu-| from the stem leaving - 8nnepog.]

I know! It looks very complicated, but believe me it is not really. Work through it slowly again, piece by piece. Here is a noun for you to practice upon.

Write out the translation for this English word:- NI wussukwhôsuonk -> 'writing'

'my writing' → n8sukwhôsuonk

'your (sg.) writing' → k8sukwhôsuonk

'her/his writing' → 8sukwhôsuonk

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