Understanding the 'his/her' mystery
So what about 'his/her father'? Well, we held off on this for a two reasons.
First is that /w/ and /u/ are basically two versions of the same sound in Mi'gmaq, which makes /w-/ drop out completely before /u/. The w- can sometimes change /g/ to /gw/ as well.
Second is, as you may have noticed, this -l on the end. It sounds exactly the same as the plural for things, but because it's used on people, it has a completely different meaning.
When you hear the -l on the end of a word naming a person, it tells us two things.
First, that there is some main person we are thinking of first, as our starting point.
Second is that we start from that main person to get to the person with the '-l' on them. It shows that the person we are talking about it related to the main person in some way.
Vocab 1
n-ujj |
|
my father | |
g-ujj |
|
your father | |
( )-ujjl |
|
his/her father |
Vocab 2
'n-gij |
|
my mother | |
'g-gij |
|
your mother | |
ug-gwij-l |
|
his/her mother |
Vocab 3
'n-tus |
|
my daughter | |
'g-tus |
|
your daughter | |
ug-tus-l |
|
his/her daughter |
Vocab 4
'n-gwis |
|
my son | |
'g-gwis |
|
your son | |
ug-gwis-l |
|
his/her son |