This lesson begins with an overview of simple sentences with verbs and subjects in section §5.1. Nouns and focus are introduced in section §5.2. Section §5.3 presents the Valley Zapotec “this” and “that” words. Sentences with objects are described in section §5.4, while section §5.5 covers more about focus and word order. Section §5.6 is about sentences with two objects.  The use of uas “very” is explained in section §5.7.

_{Lecsyony Gai, Fot Teiby. A horse runs across the main square in front of the municipio (town hall) in San Lucas Quiaviní.}

Every lesson from this unida (unit) on will contain a list of ra dizh or “words” in Zapotec like those given below, with English translations and pronunciation guides, and with notes about some of them. It’s a good idea to ask your teacher to pronounce each of the words in a new lecsyony (lesson) so that you can practice their pronunciation. Many of the words in the vocabulary will also be included on the videos that accompany this course. Remember that pronunciation guides are explained in Lecsyony Chon and Lecsyony Tap, which you can always return to for reference. Words from all the lessons are collected in the Rata Ra Dizh (“all the words”) vocabulary at the end of this book.

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 1. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

How the Ra Dizh (Vocabulary) Works

Some words in the Ra Dizh vocabulary have more than one definition. If these are similar (as with the related meanings of gyag), they are separated by commas or semicolons. However, if they’re quite different, they have different numbers, as with rguad and buny. Buny means “person”, but is also often used to mean “man”. Similarly, mniny means “child”, but it is also used to mean “boy”.

The Ra Dizh contains a lot of words that start with r-! These are habitual verb forms, as explained in section §5.1. (R- is a prefix, and because it is not a word, it does not appear separately in the Ra Dizh. Each lesson (beginning with this one) ends with a list of prefixes and endings introduced in that lesson, and there is a list of prefixes and endings at the end of this book that you can consult when you want to find out which lesson they were introduced in.)

Most of the time, a single English word can be translated by a single Zapotec word, but not always. Thus, the best translation of rbany is “wakes up”, which uses two words, and the best translation of the second meaning of rguad is “pokes at”.

Sometimes definitions include phrases like “(of a liquid)”, which is used to show that rdieby is a verb that has a liquid, such as water, as its subject. Parenthesized expressions like “(someone)” and “(something)” are used to help show the difference between similar definitions of verbs (as discussed in section §5.3 below). Thus, “boils” refers to the simple action of boiling (as in the English Water boils at 212 degrees), while “boils (something)” refers to the action of making something boil (as in Elena boils water every day).

In Valley Zapotec, there are many words that are spelled the same, but pronounced differently (just as in English we have cases like read, as in I read a book every day (read rhymes with seed) versus I read a book yesterday (read rhymes with said)). Sometimes (as with the English read case) two such words may be similar in meaning, as with re [rèe’] “this” versus re [rèe] “that”. Make sure you can pronounce the difference between these two words and other such sets that you learn.

Your teacher will read the vocabulary words for you, and you can practice them by yourself with the recordings.

Xiëru Zalo Ra Dizh (Notes About the Vocabulary)

1. Lia Len “Elena” is an example of a girl’s name using the TITLE Lia, which is not translated into English (for more about Lia and other Valley Zapotec titles, see Personal Names and Titles in Unida Teiby). Speakers may not always use Lia when addressing or referring to a young woman, but it’s best for you as a language learner to do so.

2. In this lesson, you’ll see picture captions like fot teiby xte lecsyony gai “picture one of lesson five”. Xte or xten is a very useful word that often corresponds to English of. It’s used in phrases like tarea teiby xte lecsyony gai “exercise one of lesson five” and fot tyop xte lecsyony gai “picture two of lesson five”. You’ll see xte  used in many ways in later lessons, and will learn more about its use in Lecsyony Tsëda.

§5.1. Simple sentences

Look at the following Zapotec SENTENCES. (A sentence is a complete statement that tells about an event or state and who or what was affected by it.)

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 2. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

Each sentence contains two words, a SUBJECT (which is who or what the sentence is about) and a VERB (which tells the action the sentence is concerned with).

If you compare these sentences with the vocabulary list at the beginning of this lesson, you’ll see that in each case the verb comes at the beginning of the sentence, before the subject. Verb plus subject is the most basic WORD ORDER used in Zapotec sentences (as you can see, it’s different from the English word order, in which the subject comes before the verb).

In Zapotec, a verb may tell about either a state or an action. All of the sentences given earlier tell about actions. Rcyetlaz “is happy” or “gets happy” is a verb that tells the state the subject is in:

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 3. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

The sentences above are all in the HABITUAL form. As you can see, they all refer to habitual, general, usual actions, events, or states (the way you might talk about something that happens every day, for example). (In the Rata Ra Dizh and other places in this book we will use the abbreviation “hab.” to mean “habitual”. Each lesson from this one on will include a list of new abbreviations at the end, and there is also a complete list of all these abbreviations at the end of this book.)

The habitual verbs in these sentences all start with a PREFIX r- (perhaps similarly, you might notice that the English verbs in the translations all end with an ENDING -s, although English -s and Zapotec r- do not mean the same thing). All habitual verbs in Zapotec begin with this prefix. As you can see from looking at the vocabulary at the beginning of this lesson, the verbs there are all listed in the habitual form.

Habitual or r- forms are the usual forms of the main entry for verbs in the Rata Ra Dizh and in many other Zapotec dictionaries. These habitual verb entries are all defined in the vocabulary with an English verb ending in -s. In this book, when we make a general reference to a verb, we will use a habitual (dictionary entry) form translated this way.

(As you’ll see later, a habitual verb may have other translations depending on context. For instance, in a story, you might use Rbany buny to mean “The man used to wake up”, if you are referring to a habitual action in the past. In this book, we will generally use present time translations like those above for habitual verbs used as examples. In Zapotec, there is not a one-to-one correspondence between verb forms and time reference, the way there is in English or most other languages you may have studied.)

§5.2. Nouns and focus

Zhyap, becw, buny, mniny, cabai, nyis, and other such words referring to people, animals, and things are NOUNS, as are their English counterparts. An important difference between English and Zapotec is that there is no Zapotec word corresponding to English the, however. So while the subjects of the Zapotec sentences you’ve seen up to now consist of one word each, the English sentences need a two-word NOUN PHRASE to be complete. (A PHRASE is a set of words that express a single concept, like the water or the good boy or this dog.) In some English sentences, you don’t need the, so “Water boils”, with a one-word subject, would be another good translation for the sentence Rdieby nyis. However, the Zapotec nouns in these sentences usually won’t be translated with “a” or “an”. You’ll learn how to express this idea in Lecsyony Xop.

It’s possible to begin a Zapotec sentence with something other than a verb, such as a noun or a name:

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 4. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

In these examples, the subject comes first, not the verb. Speakers use this word order to show a greater emphasis, or FOCUS, on the subject. When the subject is before the verb, it is the subject specifically, not just the whole event, which is the focus of the speaker’s attention. The most common use of sentences like these is to answer a question like “Who runs?” or “What boils?”, for example. (You’ll learn about how to ask such questions in Lecsyony Xop.) In English, answers to such questions are often pronounced with more loudness or vocal emphasis on the focused noun or name corresponding to “who” or “what”. In English translations in this book, we will represent English focus by underlining the nouns that are in focus.

Using focus sentences in Zapotec can be tricky. It’s fine to use a sentence beginning with a noun or name if you are answering a “who” or “what” question (as in Tarea Chon) or putting special emphasis on that noun or name. However, the majority of Zapotec sentences begin with verbs, and this is normally the order speakers are most comfortable with using. Don’t make the mistake of starting Zapotec sentences with nouns or names just because that order seems most like English!

§5.3. “This” and “that”

You can use the words re “this” [rèe’] and re “that” [rèe] to make Zapotec noun phrases more specific, as in the following sentences:

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 5. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

Re “this” is used to refer to something close by, while re “that” is used for something further away or out of sight. There are two important things to notice about these new words.

First, they are spelled the same, but pronounced differently — re [rèe’] “this” has a KC vowel pattern (and a falling tone), while re [rèe] “that” has a KP vowel pattern (and a low tone). Listen as your teacher reads the sentences above. Make sure that you can pronounce these words so that your teacher can tell which one you mean, and make sure you can tell which one your teacher is saying too! (This example shows how important pronunciation is — when you see either of the two re words written, you can’t tell for sure which one it is until you hear it pronounced.) Think about the two pronunciations, and see if you can associate them with the two meanings. Maybe you’ll feel that re [rèe] that sounds longer in some way than re [rèe’] “this” — and this makes sense, since a re [rèe] “that” word identifies a noun that is a longer distance away from a noun followed by a re [rèe’] “this” word.

The second thing to notice about these “this” and “that” words is that they go after the noun, in this noun phrase pattern:

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 6. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

The order of a “this” or “that” noun phrase in Zapotec is the opposite of the English order.

These two re words are mainly used to emphasize or contrast one noun as opposed to others. Because of this, noun phrases that use either re word are almost always focused (used before the verb of a sentence).

Zapotec noun phrases like becw re and mniny re have two words, but nouns like becw and mes or even names like Bed or Lia Len work similarly to these phrases — like them, they can be either subjects or objects. In this book we will often use “noun phrase” as a general term to include single noun words, names, and noun phrases like those with re, as well as even longer noun phrases which you’ll learn about later.

_{Fot Tyop xte Lecsyony Gai. Colorful drinks for sale in the market in Tlacolula.}

§5.4. Objects

Below is a different type of Zapotec sentence:

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 7. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

These sentences contain a habitual verb (again starting with r-) and not one but two nouns. The first noun or name in these cases is the subject, while the second (telling who the event affected) is the OBJECT. Verb followed by subject followed by object is the usual order in Zapotec. (In English, on the other hand, the word order is subject, verb, object.)

Sometimes (in both English and Zapotec) a word may have different meanings depending on the situation in which you use it. The Zapotec verb rguad, for example, can mean either “stings” or “pokes”, depending on what kind of sentence it is used in. (For more about the “pokes” use of rguad, see section §5.5.)

Some English verbs can be used both in sentences that contain only a subject, to which no other noun can logically be added, and also in sentences that have both an object and a subject. We use the same word boils, for example, in both The water boils and The person boils the water. Another example is wakes up, as in The man wakes up and The dog wakes up the girl: in the first sentence, we know that wakes up refers to the man waking up by himself, while in the second, it is the girl who wakes up.

Zapotec is very different. Most Zapotec verbs are either used only with a subject OR only with both a subject and an object. Verbs in the second group need to have an object in their sentence in order to make a complete statement.

To say “boils” when you’re just talking about what a liquid does, you say rdiedy, while to say “boils” when you mean the action of making a liquid boil, you say rsudieby. With the first verb, you need only a subject (the liquid), while with the second, you need to mention both a subject and an object (the person who does the boiling, plus the liquid that boils). It doesn’t make sense to use rsudieby in the first situation.

To say “wakes up”, referring to what someone does after sleeping, you say rbany, while to refer to someone doing something to cause another person or animal to wake up, you say rcwany. With the first verb, you need only a subject (the one who awakens after sleeping), while with the second, you need to mention both a subject and an object (the person or animal who makes another person or animal wake up, plus that other person or animal). Again, rcwany would not make sense if you’re talking about a person waking up by him- or herself.

This information is always part of the vocabulary entry in every case where you might be confused. Check out the vocabulary at the beginning of this lesson: rsudieby is defined as “boils (something)”, while rcwany is defined as “wakes (someone) up”. The “(something)” and “(someone)” tell you that an object must be used with these verbs.

(You might notice that pairs like rdieby and rsudieby or rbany and rcwany look similar, just as they have similar meanings. You’ll see more pairs of related verbs like this later.)

§5.5. More about focus and word order

Sentences containing an object can also have different word orders to show focus, as in the following examples:

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 8. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

In examples like these, the subject appears before the verb. Sentences like these indicate that the subject is emphasized, and might be used to answer questions like “What stings the teacher?” or “Who boils the water?”

In a similar way, sentences like the following involve focus on the object. The first sentence might be used to answer the question “What does the girl grab?”

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 9. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

(Again, we use underlining to show which noun phrase is focused.)

Sometimes the situation is more complicated, however. Consider the following sentence:

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 10. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

Does this mean “The woman wakes up the boy” (for instance, in answer to the question “Who wakes up the boy?”), or does it mean “The boy wakes up the woman” (for instance, in answer to the question “Who does the boy wake up?”)? In fact, we can’t tell! The Zapotec sentence could have either of these meanings — all you know if you hear it is that the woman is the focus of the speaker’s attention. To be sure of what this sentence means, you have to consider the whole conversational CONTEXT in which the sentence is used, including what information both the speaker and hearer had and what had been said before. In any such context, the meaning of the sentence will be clear to the participants in the conversation.

Here is another example:

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 11. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

This sentence has two possible pronunciations, depending on whether re is [rèe’] or [rèe]. Try pronouncing the sentence both ways. Then choose one, and describe the two possible situations in which you could use the sentence.

Many Zapotec sentences consisting of a noun phrase (a noun, a name, or another type of noun phrase, such as noun plus re [rèe’] or re [rèe]) plus a verb plus another noun phrase have two possible interpretations, just as you saw with the last two examples. In any given context speakers will generally have no difficulty telling which of two possible interpretations is appropriate.

A sentence can have two possible interpretations only when it is possible to interpret either noun as the subject, with the other noun as the object, of course. Thus, it is not possible to interpret Guet rnaz zhyap as “The tortilla grabs the girl”, because this just does not make sense.

§5.6. Sentences with two objects

Rdeidy “gives” can be used with two objects, as in

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 12. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

This sentence consists of a verb “give” and three following nouns. The first of these nouns is the subject, and the other two are objects. The first object tells the item that was given, and the second tells who it was given to, the recipient. In English, we can say either The woman gives the book to the child or The woman gives the child the book. The first English sentence seems closer to the Zapotec word order, but both mean the same thing, and we will use both types of English sentences in this book. In Zapotec “gives” sentences starting with the verb, however, the order is always VERB — SUBJECT — GIVEN ITEM — RECIPIENT.

Just as you’ve seen before, a speaker can focus one of the words in the sentence:

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 13. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

(Each of these sentences has only one sensible interpretation. Can you explain why? If not, try thinking about the basic order of the nouns in Zapotec “gives” sentences.)

As you’ve already seen, if one noun phrase includes re [rèe’] “this” or re [rèe] “that”, that noun phrase will be focused. (Remember, since it’s usual to put a “this” or “that” phrase in the focus position, at the beginning of the sentence, we don’t mark these phrases with underlining in the English translation.)

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 14. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

There are some Zapotec verbs that can be used in more than one sentence type. You’ve learned that rguad means “stings”, when its subject is an animal like a bee. Rguad can also used with two objects, with a different meaning, as in

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 15. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

When rguad has one object, it means “stings”. When it has two objects, it means “pokes (something) at (someone or something)”.

_{Lecsyony Gai, Fot Chon. A small convenience store in San Lucas Quiaviní.}

§5.7. Using uas “really, very”

Uas “really, very” is a useful word that you can add to many Zapotec sentences, almost always at the beginning of the sentence.

^{Lecsyony 5, Video 16. (With Geraldina López Curiel.)}

Usually uas comes first in the sentence, followed by the verb and then the subject. Usually “really” is an appropriate English translation, but in some sentences you’ll see later, “very” may also work. Sometimes speakers feel that sentences sound more complete with uas, even though this word won’t be translated.

Prefix

Every lesson from this one on will contain a list of prefixes and other word parts presented in that lesson, with meanings and pronunciation guides. Prefixes and endings are not included in the Rata Ra Dizh; instead, there is a list of prefixes and endings at the end of this book that you can consult if you want to remind yourself what they mean or find out what lesson they were introduced in.

r- [r] (habitual verb prefix)

Abbreviation

Every lesson from this one  on will contain a list of abbreviations introduced in that lesson.  At the end of the book, you can find an index of abbreviations in case you want to remind yourself what they mean or find out what lesson they were introduced in.

hab. habitual

Just for fun! Find the following words (in Zapotec!) in the Word Search below.