Język Ewe - Ewe language - Eʋegbe

Ewe grammar notes

This page will serve as a short and handy grammar reference. As with other sections, its beginnings are very modest, but it will gradually grow, becoming more comprehensive and better organised.

Definite article

The definite article in Ewe comes in two forms: and á. The first of these is a separate word coming right after the word it refers to, while á is simply added to the end of the word it makes definite. For example: "person" is ame but "the person" can be either ameá or ame lá. If the word already ends in -a (eg. ga "money" or da "snake") you cannot add á to it - in this case ga lá and da lá are the sole possible variants.

Asking questions

A simple way of asking "yes-or-no" type questions is by ending sentence with a low tone à. Eg. Ameá lolo = "the person is fat" but Ameá loloà? = "Is the person fat?"

Forming the plural

The plural is formed by adding -wó suffix to the noun. Eg.: ati = tree; atiwo = trees; da = snake; dawo=snakes. Some nouns (like tsi = water; or dze = salt) are uncountable and usually don't have a plural form.

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