My Family

We will learn how to introduce ourselves and our family members. In the examples below Saaraa will be introducing herself and her family to us. Professor Jack will interpret her words for us.

We now know that ‘zaabaa‘ means hello. Let us look into the other parts of Saaraa’s first sentence.

‘min‘ is I or Me. ‘min-ta‘ is min with a possessive marker. So when we add -ta to ‘I‘ it becomes ‘my‘. Similarly ‘nim‘ is ‘you‘ and ‘nim-ta‘ is ‘your‘

‘idi‘ is the word for ‘name‘ and ‘luni‘ is the verb. Note that all verbs in KiLiKi end in the sound ‘ni‘. ‘luni‘ is a very common verb in KiLiKi that is used to represent English verbs such as ‘is/am/are‘. If a sentence does not have any other verb, we use the verb luni.

In the second sentence ‘baahaani-de‘ means ‘speaking‘. ‘baahaani‘ is ‘to speak‘ and the ‘-de‘ is the present tense marker.

‘leelaa‘ is the word for language. ‘min baahaani-de kiLiki leelaa-ya‘ means ‘I am speaking kiLiki language‘. The ‘-ya‘ after leelaa is an accusative marker telling us that the action of speaking is happening on leelaa(language). We will learn more about the case markers when we visit nouns later.

See the use of ‘luni‘ again. Here ‘luni‘ is used to represent ‘am‘. We need not use any tense markers for verbs that are not time-dependant.

‘min luni-ga unO indifaa‘ means ‘I was an Indian‘
‘min luni-de unO indifaa‘ means ‘I am an Indian‘
‘min luni-fu unO indifaa‘ means ‘I will be an Indian‘

Note the tense markers ‘-ga‘ for past tense, ‘-de‘ for present tense and ‘-fu‘ for future tense.

‘indibaa‘ is ‘India‘ and ‘indifaa‘ is ‘Indian‘.
‘chaynabaa‘ is ‘China‘ and ‘chaynafaa‘ is Chinese(person).

The number unoa is also used as an article when needed.

‘*kle‘ is the plural marker. You can add it to any noun to make it into a plural.

‘unO amerikafaa‘ – ‘an American‘
‘dunO amerikafaa*kle‘ – ‘two americans‘

‘min‘ is me. ‘min*kle‘ is we.

‘vaaneeni‘ is ‘to learn‘ and the ‘-fu‘ marker changes the tense to future. So ‘vaaneeni-fu‘ is ‘will learn‘

We now know chovO verbs.

1. luni is is/am/are
2. moovaani is to love
3. baahaani is to speak
4. vaaneeni is to learn

We will now move to Saaraa’s house where she will teach us how to introduce our family members.

‘thaa‘ is the word for ‘he/she/it(living thing)‘. Please note that kiLiki does not have separate words for he and she. All living things including animals and plants can be referred with ‘thaa‘.

In Image 4, Saaraa refers to her mom as ‘thaa‘ meaning she and in the second sentence she uses the same ‘thaa‘ with ‘-ta‘ possessive marker to convert ‘she‘ to ‘her‘.

We have also learnt a new word ‘maa‘ which means ‘mother‘

‘paa‘ is the word for father. Please note same ‘thaa‘ is used here to mean ‘he‘ and ‘thaa-ta‘ to mean ‘his‘

Saaraa in introducing her brother in Image 6. ‘gaa‘ means brother. We will learn later how to tell ‘elder brother‘ or ‘younger brother‘

In the same image you can also see the word ‘ne‘ meaning ‘and‘. So ‘min ne nim‘ means ‘me and you‘. ‘maa ne paa‘ means ‘mom and dad‘.

‘dhiki‘ means ‘this‘
‘dhooki‘ means ‘that‘.

‘mapakidiki‘ is the word for ‘family‘.
Please remember the ending ‘kidiki‘, which we will be using to mean family of things.
For instance
‘yeeti‘ is a tree and ‘yeetikidiki‘ is a ‘forest‘.
‘nE‘ is a star and ‘nEkidiki‘ is a ‘galaxy‘.

What is the kiLiki word for ‘sister‘, ‘uncle‘ or ‘grandpa‘? Let us look into how to easily remember the words for other family members.

Professor Jack is not here now. We have to interpret ourselves. ‘gaa‘ is brother. So, ‘pagaa‘ is dad’s brother.

papaa is dad’s dad
pamaa is dad’s mom

If you know paa(dad) maa(mom) gaa(brother) and see(sister) you can easily derive all the other relations around them.

As ‘see‘ is sister, ‘masee‘ is mom’s sister.

mamaa is mom’s mom
mapaa is mom’s dad

The word cards in Image 10 give you the words in KiLiKi script, transliteration and English translation.

When we start with a ‘maa‘ side relation, we remove a single ‘a‘ from ‘maa‘ and add the name of the relation to the end. So, ‘maagaa‘ is incorrect. ‘magaa‘ is correct.

The same logic holds true for the dad’s side as well. ‘pasee‘ is dad’s sister. See how one ‘a‘ from ‘paa‘ is removed when it is added with ‘see‘ the word for sister.

The words ‘dik‘ and ‘kid‘ are phonetic reversals meaning son and daughter respectively. The word for child is ‘debfaa‘. ‘faa‘ represents a person and ‘deb‘ is to denote small. You can also see the word ‘moovaafaa‘ meaning ‘lover‘. ‘moovaa‘ is the word for love and ‘faa‘ is the word for person.

‘baahafaa‘ is speaker
‘vaaneefaa‘ is learner

It is easy to form verbal nouns with KiLiKi.

We covered a lot in this session. With little practice, you will be able to introduce yourself to your learning partner and get to know the names of their family members.