Ne' ne haya'tí haksa'aa hanôkek ne kanöhsa'ôwe kahatakô.
There was a little boy who lived all alone in a house in the forest.

ne  ::  phrase marker particle

kanöhsa'ôwe  ::  native-style house

The word kanöhsa'ôwe refers to a native-style house or building.  We can use this word as a starting point to learn several other related words. For instance, the word kanöhsa' refers to a temporary hunting lodge.  The more typical word used today for a house, of any style, is kanöhsút, which literally means "standing house, standing building".

The ending -'ôwe that we see on kanöhsa'ôwe, conveys the idea of being native, original, real, genuine or authentic.  This same ending can be found in the word ökwe'ôwe which means "native person, Indian".  We can add prefixes to this word to further specify who we're talking about:

kökwe'ôwe  --  I'm Native
sökwe'ôwe  --  you're Native
hökwe'ôwe  --  he's Native; a Native man
yakökwe'ôwe  --  she's Native; a Native woman
ökwe'ôwe  --  Native person

[This set of words shows another, slightly different, set of prefixes than the ones we've seen before.  The reason for this is because the stem here, -ökwe'ôwe, starts with -ö- instead of a consonant.  However, there are very few such stems in Mingo, so for now we'll just focus on learning the words as a whole, rather than on the prefix pattern itself.]

We can combine some of these words with the questions we learned earlier:

Káwé hanôkek ne hökwe'ôwe?  --  Where did the Indian man live?
Káwé yenôke' ne yakökwe'ôwe?  --  Where does the Indian woman live?

We can also use these words in yes/no questions.  All that is required is to raise the pitch of your voice at the end of the question.  Compare:

Ne' sökwe'ôwe.  --  You're Native.
Ne' sökwe'ôwe?  --  Are you Native?

To answer a yes/no question, we need to know how to say "yes", and how to say "no".  Two common words for "yes" are túkës and ê'.  Two words for "no" are hë'ë and thë'ë.

Ne' sökwe'ôwe?  --  Are you an Indian?
Túkës, kökwe'ôwe.  --  Yes, I'm an Indian.

Ne' hökwe'ôwe?  --  Is he an Indian?
Thë'ë.  --  No.

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