Lesson 2

Lesson 2 — Grammatical Topic — Nouns and person makers

When one of the person markers k–, p– or s– shows up with a noun, it indicates the possessor or possessive: it tells you who owns or possesses the noun — or stands in some relation to it.
Here are examples of nouns with the three person markers. All of these nouns
	k–iskon	"my family"	iskon
	p–iskon	"your family"
	s–iskon	"his/her/its family"
And with the noun ya "arrow"
	k–ya	"my arrow"
	p–ya	"your arrow"
	s–ya	"his/her/its arrow"	ya

The article ma– and ha– with Nouns

Top


English uses words called articles that show up with nouns: “the” is the definite article and “a/an” is the indefinite article in English.
Samala may use ma to mark a noun, unless it’s the name of a person or place. If you say a noun by itself or if the noun comes at the beginning of a sentence, it generally shows up with ma.
Remember, ma doesn’t mean “the” or “a/an,” it just lets you know that a noun is next. For convenience, it’s often translated into English with “the” or “a/an.”
	ma ku		"a person" or "the person"
	ma tomol		"a canoe/boat" or "the canoe/boat"		ma tomol
The most accurate way to describe ma would be to say that it's a "noun marker" — ma notifies you that the next word is a noun. But the grammatical term "article" is more familiar and that's how these lessons refer to ma.
These lessons cite nouns without the article — say in the vocabulary section or in the captions to illustrations — only to make learning them easier. Ordinarily nouns show up with ma most of the time.
Things to keep in mind about the Samala article:
	There are two forms of the article: one when the noun is the first element in the phrase — or the only element, in the examples above — and another when the noun is not the first element.
	ma	when the noun is the first element in the phrase
		ma ku	"a person" or "the person"	ma ku
	ha	when the noun is not the first element in the phrase
		k–itaq ha huu	"I hear the dog" or "I hear a dog"
	Samala often has different forms for words depending on whether they come first in the phrase or not, as you'll learn later. For example, "that" is kweki when it comes first in the phrase and heki otherwise.
	Samala marks nouns with ma or ha in many situations where you would never use the article in English. You've seen examples of this already:
	with numbers: where you'd never say "one the world"
		pakas ha up	"one world"	pakas ha up
	with person markers: You'd never say "the my family" or "the his arrow" in English, but the article ma / ha is really just a signal that what comes next is a noun.
		ma k–iskon	"my family"
	Another example — as you'll see shortly — involves nouns with words such as "this" and "that," where again you'd never use "the" in English:
		kweki ha w	"that deer"

Sound rule for words starting with h when they follow consonants — especially ha

Top

You drop the initial h of certain very common words when they follow a word that ends in a consonant.
	masx ha xus	"three bears"
You've seen two examples of this so far:
The initial h in the ha form of the article drops out when ha follows a word that ends in a consonant. This is so frequent and so automatic that for the sake of simplicity it is not written in these lessons; you can assume that when ha follows a consonant the h is silent.
	ha — This is the form of the article when it's not the first word in the phrase.
	pakas ha up	"one world"
	masx ha xus	"three bears"
	heki — This is the form of "that" which you use when it's not the first word in the phrase.
	ka tomol heki	ka tomol eki	"that's a canoe"
	ka a heki	ka a eki	"that's a crow"
When ha follows a vowel, the h remains in careful speech.
	skumu ha ya	"four arrows"
When h follows a vowel in regular speech, both the h and the vowel may drop out, so that you would actually say
	skumu ha ya	skum a ya	"four arrows"
	malawa ha ku	malaw a ku	"eight people"
However, the next few lessons write out the full form of careful speech until this particular sound rule comes up for a more complete discussion.

Top