Let’s return to the story of the “Woman who Ate Dirt.” Using the vocabulary in this story, let’s try putting Timucua words together to form small phrases.
To find definitions of these words, use the gloss from Lesson 1 or the Timucua dictionary to find the meanings of words:
| ano | person |
| equela | day |
| yanqua | one |
| yayi | strong |
| hachitalaca | rich |
| nia | woman |
| acu | this |
| he | eat |
Can you put some words together?
First, let’s translate: What do these three examples mean?
- Nia yayi
- Nia yanqua
- Nia hachitalaca
Second, can you create the following three examples?
- One day
- Strong person
- One person
Note the word order. While in English we say “one woman,” in Timucua it is flipped, literally saying “woman one.”
In Timucua, nouns come before adjectives and verbs. And as you might have noticed, the adjectives here act more like verbs. They express a “state of being.” But these examples are not quite sentences. We turn to some of the common ways to make sentences and statements in Lesson 2.