On this page:		Intro to –wun		Dropping Glottal stop
		"Stuck-in" vowels		Sound rules in order

There are various ways of dealing with number for nouns. As you've already seen, the easiest way is to ignore it.
You can mark the subject of a verb as dual or plural and then not bother marking number in the noun itself.
	no––iy–expe ha ii	"the children will sing"
	s–i–alpat ha w	"the two deer are running"
Another way way to indicate plural is to add –wun to a noun. This is a suffix: an element that comes after the root of the word.
Suffixes are not nearly as common in Samala as prefixes; –wun is the first suffix that you're learning.
Please don't think of –wun as "the" plural in Samala. In the next lesson you'll start learning about another form of plural that's even more common — and more complicated.
Here are examples of plurals with –wun.			ciwiswun
	ma coyini–wun	"the others, the other ones"
	ma ciwis–wun	"rattles"
	ma eneq–wun	"women"
	ma apan–wun	"towns, villages"
	ma huu–wun	"dogs"		eneqwun
			huu–wun
You've seen that verbs are precise in distinguishing dual from plural, as in io "the two of them are good" versus iho "they're good."
The plural of nouns with –wun is like the plural in English; it simply means "two or more."
You can use a –wun plural with a verb that specifies the dual:
	–i–alpat ha w–wun	"the [two] deer are running"
or the plural
	s–iy–iwon ha huu–wun	"the dogs are barking"

Here are some English sentences. What are two ways that you could translate them into Samala?
	"the women are talking"	s–iy–axutiwil ha eneq
	or	s–iy–axutiwil ha eneq–wun
	"the two dogs are sitting"	–i–lkn ha huu
	or	–i–lkn ha huu–wun
	"the two paths are [both] good"	–i–ho ha aya
	or	–i–ho ha aya–wun

Using the suffix –wun isn't as easy as it might seem at first.
To use –wun, you need to know a few new sound rules. They're very common sound rules but all the examples of them that you'll see in this lesson involve –wun.
These two rules apply in sequence: first one and then the other.
Here are two bits of background information to prepare you for the notion of stuck-in vowels:
First, in the section on glottalization, you learned that certain sets of sounds sometimes behave alike. For example, with most consonants the glottal stop of glottalization comes second:
	cc	"to be sharp"
	kot	"to break"
	waqaq	"frog"
However, with the set of consonants called liquids, you pronounce the glottal stop before the liquid. The liquid consonants of Samala are:
m	sxamin	"ocean"
n	pon	"tree, stick, wood"
w	slow	"eagle"
y	otoyin	"to lie, be lying down"
l	uli	"to hold, grasp"

Second, you've also seen that something special happens when two identical consonants come one after another:
Sequences of two consonants such as k and s become aspirated:
	ma k–koko > ma koko	"my father"
	ma s–sa > ma sa	"his/her tooth"
Guess what? Sequences of two liquid consonants do something different. The plural suffix –wun starts with a liquid. When –wun comes after a noun that ends in a liquid, you stick in an extra vowel to avoid having two liquids in a row:
	tokoy–wun > tokóyuwun	"hoops, circles"
	slow–wun > slówuwun	"eagles"
	tomol–wun > tomóluwun	"boats, canoes"
	p–itn–wun > pitnwun	"your children"
	sxamin–wun > sxamíniwun	"oceans"

The non-technical term for this extra vowel is "stuck-in vowel," which is what all the technical linguistic term "epenthetic" means in plain English.
What vowel do you stick in? And as you look over this section, pay attention to where the accent falls in the word. The stuck-in vowel doesn't take the accent that usually goes on the second syllable from the end of the word. This is a regular feature of Samala, so it's not ordinarily written — except here to make the pattern clearer.
The stuck-in vowel echoes an i or that comes before the first liquid:
i	awil–wun > awíliwun	"shrines, sacred places"
	p–itn–wun > pitnwun	"yourr children"
Otherwise, the stuck–in vowel echoes the u of the suffix –wun, no matter what the previous vowel is:
a	s–iy–akay–wun > siakáyuwun	"their beds"
e	s–el–wun > séluwun	"her necklaces"
o	k–iy–tomol–wun > kitomóluwun	"our canoes"
u	pilkuy–wun > pilkúyuwun	"(wooden) bowls"
Other suffixes with a liquid plus u follow this same pattern, as you'll learn later.
You've seen one example already: uwumu "food" is actually from uw "to eat" plus a common suffix –mu, so uw–mu > úwumu "food, something for eating."

The second common sound rule that may apply when you add the suffix –wun is that glottal stop drops out when it's followed by a consonant.
This could be –wun after glottal stop by itself
	ii–wun > iiwun	"children"
	s–pepe–wun > spepewun	"his/her older siblings"
	haxwi-wun > haxwiwun	"garments, items of clothing"
or glottal stop as part of a glottalized consonant, which loses its glottalization before a suffix like –wun.
	wic–wun > wicwun	"birds"
	waqaq–wun > waqaqwun	"frogs"
	s–popo–wun > popowun	"his/her grandfathers"

To end up with the forms of Samala words as they're actually spoken, you apply these two sound rules in sequence.
The first rule inserts a vowel between two liquids in a row:
	k–ay–wun > kayuwun	"my daughters"
	p–itn–wun > pitnwun	"your children"
The second rule deletes glottal stop and/or glottalization when a consonant follows:
	wic–wun > wicwun	"birds"
	waqaq–wun > waqaqwun	"frogs"
The second rule would also delete the glottal stop from ay and itn, except that the first rule has already stuck in a vowel so that you no longer have a glottalized consonant with another consonant right after it.
This is an important point. Many of the sound rules in Samala are ordered this way.
The concept of applying the sound rules in order actually makes learning easier: instead of memorizing exceptions to the rules, you learn a set of rules that turn the apparent exceptions into a regular pattern.