Lesson 3: Describing words come after§
In English the describing word comes first: big house. Here a content word that describes another comes after it, as in Thai or Indonesian:
- guyi kudu "big house" (literally "house big")
- totu tan "this dog"
- ewo meli "a small person"
A content word is one with a meaning of its own, the name of a thing, an action or a quality. The small grammar words, like to and la, each have their own place.
To say that the house is big, put gun "is" in between: guyi gun kudu. "The house is big." Without gun, guyi kudu is usually heard as "the big house".
More generally, a word after a noun can describe it, say what it is, or say what it does. You pick the form by what you mean:
| You mean | Say | Example |
|---|---|---|
| it is something | gun + word | guyi gun kudu "the house is big" |
| it does something | the word, with le, sin or manni to be exact (aspect words, lesson 10) | ewo le niba "the person is walking" |
| which one | man + word | ewo man niba "the person who walks" |
In everyday talk people often leave these out, say guyi kudu or ewo niba, and trust the listener. That's always allowed, and it works whenever the context makes it clear. The table is for when it doesn't.
How something is done goes straight after the verb, before the object: oyi fanse "say calmly", nawi yobe pasu "eat food quickly". Put the same word after the object and it describes the object instead, so nawi pasu yobe is "eat fast food".
Position can also make any word a noun. As an object, sepi "apologise" becomes "an apology".
gun has a few other uses:
- with a noun: wan gun tiwu. "She is a child."
- with a place: wan gun mon guyi. "He's at home." (mon "at", lesson 7)
- with an action word, it gives the state of whoever the action is done to: gun tapi "is closed", wan gun kuwi "she is protected". So to gun nuta is "I am feared"; to say "I'm afraid", use the plain verb, to nuta (I fear)
- after another verb, it means "to be": momu gun tiwu "want to be a child"
- with no subject, it means "there is": gun musu feli. "There are many things."
When several things follow a noun, they go in this order: describing words, then a number, then la, then this or that, then a pi phrase, then a man clause. For example, guyi kudu sa la tan "these two big houses". A number and la can go together, but once there's a number la is optional, so guyi kudu sa tan means the same. You'll meet pi phrases in lesson 7 and man clauses in lesson 12.
Gender is an ordinary describing word, and you only use it when it matters: tiwu futa "daughter", tiwu lowu "son".
Small operator words go in front of what they cover. The degree words work this way: bi kudu "very big", ke kudu "bigger", tason kudu "rather big". So do mu "not" and a few others, which come in lesson 4. "Bigger than" comes later, in lesson 9.
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