Yowza.
I think today broke my brain!
Last week’s lesson was on family relationships — mother, father, sister, brother, sister-in-law, cousins, grandparents, and so on. Like any language, there are ways to name each member of our families and declare their relationships. I just have to memorize them, and of course there are many variations of each to remember. Grann, Granmè, Grannma, etc. But with some work I can do it.
Add to that, then, this week’s lesson on what I can only call “sentence inversion.”
Here’s the jist:
When you have a relationship with someone, you are something with them as well. So, “I am your friend” can also be said “Your friend, I am” (if we are talking like Yoda).
Fun fact: kreyòl ayisyen does that—a lot!
“Mwen se zanmi ou” is “I am your friend.” (In kreyòl, most modifiers come after the noun.)
BUT you can also say: “Zanmi ou mwen ye” – “Your friend I am.” (Oh, I should mention there are two forms of “to be” — “se” and “ye,” and they are used in different ways in the sentence so they appear in different places.)
AND you can also say “Se zanmi ou mwen ye,” which is just an extra helping of “to be” verb that is a signifier and not a verb itself. It’s not “Is your friend I am,” but just “(here it comes) Your friend I am.”
SO today we spent time pounding my brains on things like “Kisa Michael ak Sonja ou ou?” (What are Michael and Sonja to you?”) Now, my teacher knows all about my family, and our eldest son (premyè pitit gason nou) was married (te marye) to Sonja (pitit bèlfi) last Wednesday (mèkredi pase a).
The answer is, of course, “Michael ak Sonja se pitit gason ak pitit bèlfi nou.” And then… “Pitit gason ak pitit bèlfi nou Michael ak Sonja ye” AND THEN “Se pitit gason ak pitit bèlfi nou Michael ak Sonja ye.”
We did this for all the relatives: my married son & daughter-in-law, my son and his girlfriend (“mennaj” is such a great, simple word in kreyòl), my son’s girlfriend’s mother, my friends and their children, and lordy my brain feels like cotton candy right now.