lesson 16: society
We live in a society! Let’s learn some words that are useful for navigating a society:
community, team, group
way, method, tradition, path
to swap, to trade; market, shop
money, valuable thing
dead; to kill
many, very
Let’s use the new words in sentences:
nasin mute li lon.
There are many traditions.
jan li pali lon kulupu.
People work in teams.
len pona li wile e mani mute.
Good clothes require a lot of money.
jan mute li moli tan utala suli.
Many people died because of the war.
mi wile esun e soweli mi.
I would like to sell my cow.
mi wile ala esun e soweli sina.
I don't want to buy your cow.
Here is something fun you might notice: esun generally means ‘to swap’, but there’s enough information in the sentence to know that it specifically means ‘to sell’ in one sentence, and ‘to buy’ in another!
more about mute
mute is a very useful word to have. We don’t see adjectives attach to pronouns mi, sina, ona all that often, but mute is so useful that it does that quite frequently:
we, many of us
kulupu pali li jo e mi mute.
The labour union includes a lot of us.
you lot, you guys, y'all
ona li ken sitelen e sina mute.
They can take a picture of you guys.
Remember the special rule that says: “when mi or sina is the subject of the sentence, we remove the li”? That rule is quite specific! Take a look at these sentences:
mi mute li kalama musi.
We perform music together.
sina mute li sona e ni.
Many of you know this.
Notice how the li isn’t dropped! This is because the subject isn’t either mi or sina, but instead mi mute and sina mute.
It might seem like an odd quirk, but remember — the purpose of li is to show where the verb starts! If it was dropped here, we would instead assume mute is the verb.