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 xyen pa tsanblo 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 gosa pawgam.

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."

xuke zi tayar?

Are you ready?

co hay

That's right.

da bi xyen, spi co, da kyer felin.

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

to poljino ten gransa famli. bekaw co, da dwel gransa 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 gran sa xyen

the big dog

hu reverses this:

to xyen hu gran

the big dog

Sometimes a hu construction is easier to follow.

go bu kyer to go xaw paydey sa kino.

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

go bu kyer to kino hu go xaw paydey.

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 ploy 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 tsanblo go

The dog that bit me.

to kanin hu go pa tsanblo

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 tsanblo go

to kanin hu go pa tsanblo 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.

Go on to Lesson 6

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