LESSON FIVE — Ci, Ca, Cu, Co, Hu, Ce

ci, ca and cu form a pattern. They mean, respectively, "here" (near the speaker), "there" (near the person addressed), and "there" (remote from both the speaker and the person addressed).

go sta ci.

I am here.

zi sta ca.

You are there.

da sta cu

He is over there.

With sa, they form demonstrative adjectives:

cisa hon tem snapoleonzo.

This book is about Napoleon.

casa kanin pa tsanku gosa felin.

That (near you) dog bit my cat.x

cusa poljin xaw zi.

Yonder cop is looking at you.

They can combine with ba to make demonstrative pronouns:

ciba bi to hon hu go pa tor.

This is the book I wrote.

ciq don caba ko go.

Please give that (thing near you) to me.

xayn ke cuba bi gosa pawgarm.

It seems that yonder thing is my shoe.

CO

co is an odd little word that works very much like the word "co" in Glosa. It means "What has just been said."

kyu zi tayar?

Are you ready?

co hay

That's right.

da bi kanin. spi co, da kyer felin.

He is a dog. Nevertheless (in spite of that) he likes cats.

to poljino ten gasa famli. kaw co, da dwel gasa dom.

The policeman has a big family. Therefore (because of that) he lives in a big house.

HU

hu is, in a way, the opposite of sa. sa says that what goes before modifies what comes after:

to ga sa kanin

the big dog

hu reverses this:

to kanin hu ga

the big dog

Sometimes a hu construction is easier to follow.

go bu kyer to go xaw padey sa kino.

I didn't like the I-saw-yesterday movie.

go bu kyer to kino hu go xaw padey.

I didn't like the movie I saw yesterday.

The first construction with sa is Mandarin style, while the hu construction follows the English model.

Sometimes either construction can be hard to follow, and that's when you use ce.

CE

ce is a "resumptive pronoun," and can be used in sa or hu phrases to clarify things:

go pa tari to kreyon hu go zu ce tor cisa barwa.

I found the pencil I wrote this letter with.

Here, ce shows the place in the phrase where the modified word fits.

For simple phrases, it's usually not needed, and word order is sufficient.

to kanin hu pa tsanku go

The dog that bit me.

to kanin hu go pa tsanku

The dog that I bit.

Again, though, if you're talking to computers or Martians, ce can render the sentences completely unambiguous.

to kanin hu ce pa tsanku go

to kanin hu go pa tsanku ce

Sometimes you really need it.

go bu kyer to jini hu sta cesa dom to felin dorm.

I don't like the woman in whose house the cat sleeps.