Yeláwel híkw te lá:léms.

His house is bigger.

Yeláwel híkw te lá:léms means ‘His house is bigger.’ (literally ‘More big (is) the house of him/her’).

Vocabulary and Pronunciation

This phrase is combines yeláwel híkw ((bigger) with lá:lém-s (house of).

Audio: Elizabeth Herrling

Note: this is a complete sentence in Halq’eméylem, but the audio has been cut from a longer phrase, which slightly affects Elizabeth’s pronunciation, because more words will be following.

Structure

The structure of this phrase is as follows:-

Note that there is no word for ‘is’, and no word for ‘his/her’. Both of these are just understood, not directly expressed in the Halq’eméylem sentence.

Halq’eméylem is different from English, in that pronouns (like ‘he’, ‘him’, ‘his’, and ‘her’) are optional, and can just be understood from context.