Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Possessive Pronouns; Past Tense

This week has been a little slower. We have a big quiz tomorrow, so we have spent a lot of class time discussing it and the final week of class. Today, we discussed a few phrases, but mostly worked on our dialogs. I'm not going to put mine on here because it's pretty long and complicated. We're supposed to study it for the quiz tomorrow, but I can't remember all the different terms, so I'll have to simplify it. For today's post, I'm going to just share a few things we were supposed to study in the book over the weekend: possessive pronouns and the past tense.

Possessive Pronouns:
me = my
wo = your
ne = his / her
yεn = our
mo = your
w⊃⊃nom / ⊃⊃mo = their


We can use these simply as expressing possession of something, but we can also use these with the idiomatic expressions from yesterday's lesson. Note: when a noun that starts with a vowel follows certain pronouns, it is necessary to drop the vowel of the pronoun for "me", "wo", "ne", "yεn". The two words are contracted to make one word. For the other two pronouns or words that begin with consonants, there is no change. Check out these examples:
M'ani gye. = I'm pleased.
Me dan = My room
W'ani = Your eyes
Wo ntoma = Your cloth
N'ani awu. = She is ashamed.
Ne nsuom nam = His fish
Y'asõ yε den. We're stubborn.
Yεn fie = Our home
Mo asõ yε den. = You're stubborn.
W⊃⊃nom adamfo = Their friend

Past Tense:
To make a verb into past tense, there are two different practices. When the sentence is simple and the verb ISN'T followed by a complementary noun or verb, add the suffix "-e" or "-i" to the end of it. When the verb IS followed by a complement, the final letter of the verb is lengthened. Check out the examples below:
Mebae. = I came.
Mebaa ha. = I came here.

Wok⊃e. = You went.
Wot⊃⊃ ataadeε bi. = You bought a dress.

⊃pεe. = He liked it.
⊃nomm nsuo. = She drank water.

Yεhwεe. = We watched it.
Yεt⊃nn abor⊃bε. = We sold pineapple.

Mogyee. = You got it.
Modwene hõ? = You thought about it?

W⊃⊃nom twεne. = They waited.
W⊃⊃nom dii εmo. = They ate rice.

A couple things we learned today, though they're unrelated to these lessons:
When talking about visiting a person versus a place, there are certain verbs to use. We "visit" (sra) a person, but we "go" (k⊃) to a place. It's the same way in English, but I think we don't always remember this rule. Learning a language always helps me to understand my own language better!
Though adjectives are placed after the nouns they modify, when it comes to nationalities or "proper" adjectives, they go before the noun. For example, Ghanaian musicians is "Ghana nnwomtofo⊃" and American authors is "America ⊃twerεfo⊃."

Favorite word of the day: "asetena" which means "way of life". This is a nice word to know!

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