E! Tutosi tuse lo?

     Hey! How are you? Is the common greeting of Dega; there is no real hello, but often an exclamation: “E!” is used before “tutosi tuse lo?” – “how are you?” (often shortened to simply “tuse lo?”) as a greeting. If one is feeling well they might answer “tuse te etos” or if one is feeling unwell they might answer “tuse te itos” or if they were feeling normal/OK/fine they might say “tuse te tos”.

     These are all things we have learned before—“tu-tosi” – what condition. “tus-e” – be-PRESENT-INDICATIVE. “lo” – you. “e-/i-/-/tos” – healthy/-/average health/-/unhealthy. And “te” – I/me.

    

     Some more conversational phrases and words are:

u – Adv. yes/-/no (yes can be used for emphasis or as an answer to a question.)

turaŋi dolat ri lo arata – how old are you (kind of a waste of breath, but oh well.) (tu-raŋi is how many)

tukoda tuse lo – who are you? (Used more for conversation)

tudalos tuse lo dira – What god are you guard of? (Used more for very important people. The person would then be called “guard of their god”. We will learn more about that when we talk of religion. tu-dalos is “which (what) god”, and dira is “guard of a god”.)

Sample sentence:

Keyate Ranu, “E! Tutosi tuse lo?” Sade zu.

Key-at  -  e      Ran   -   u,   “E!       Tu    -    tos      -      i        tus - e     lo?” Sad - e     zu.

Say-PAST-INDIC Ran-FEMIN  “Hey! INTEROG-condition-NOM/ACC be-INDIC you  Sad-MASC to/at

“Hey! How are you?” Ronū said to Sodā.

Note: I have decided to change the noun endings of “-os” and “-el” which are currently genitive and dative to genitive and “from” and make dative into a genitive preposition. I will change that in the simple nouns post as well.