Takelma Family Learning Lessons

Family Members

Family Members

In this book, we will discuss how to use family terms to talk about our family members. There are a few things in Takelma that are different than in English, so pay close attention to what exactly the words mean. Make sure to learn the words that apply to your family situation first so you can apply them in real life situations!

To start, we need to understand a couple things about possession. Let's look at the word for mother as an example.

Here are some of the different forms of the English word for mother.
In order to talk about relatives, we need to know who the relative belongs to, or who possesses them. We will explore that on the next page.

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In English, we use words like "my," "your," and "their" to show possession, or who someone belongs to.
In Takelma, the indicator for possession is attached to the word.

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In English, we could say "My mother (is tall.)" as a sentence. To replace the word with Takelma, we could say "Wihín (is tall.)"

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The word níxa can mean "the mother," "his mother," "her mother," "their mother," and "a mother"!

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Use the word hintée when addressing your mother. Instead of "Hey mom!" try saying "Hey hintée!"

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Family Tree

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We are going to introduce a number of vocabulary words with many different forms throughout this book. On the next few pages, we include an sample family tree to clarify the information. To make these words easier to learn, I encourage you to create your own family tree with people from your family to help practice these words.

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Let's look at some examples!

This is an sample family tree. In this case, all the Takelma words are in the "his/her/their" form. We will use this as our example family to explain some relations.

This is the maternal side of the family. That means all the relatives are on the mother's side of the family. In Takelma, some words rely on knowing whether a relative is maternal or paternal.

This is the paternal side of the Family, the Dad's side of the family. Can you think of a paternal relative of yours?

The word you use for "niece" or "nephew" depends on the gender of your sibling.

Both siwìxa and ts’àxa mean either niece or nephew. It doesn't matter what gender the child is, only the gender of you and your sibling.

Here, you and your older sister are the same gender. In this case, you use the word (or the possessed forms of) siwìxa when talking about your niece/nephew.

Here, you and your older brother are different genders. In this case, you use the word (or the possessed forms of) ts’àxa when talking about your niece/nephew.

When talking to or about Grand-relations, it gets complicated.

In this case, these grandparents are both maternal and paternal grandparents. Your cousin may call your grandparents a different name than what you call them.

The word for grandmother, grandfather, and grandchild can all be the same word.

To this girl, these are her paternal grandparents, and she is their paternal grandchild. This is because the relation is on her dad's side. They would both take the word (or possessed form of) kamtìxa.

For these grand-relations, they are all maternal, because they are on connected on the mom's side. They would all use the word (or the possessed form of) k’àsa.