In Lesson 19 you learned some common questions words (‘who,’ ‘what,’ etc.) and learned that they can be put in many places in the sentence, not just at the beginning. There are some exceptions to this. For the words for ‘how,’ ‘how much,’ ‘how long,’ and a certain word for ‘why,’ you must put them […]
Category Archives: Basic Marshallese Grammar
Lesson 33: Negative Perfect Past
To express negative past perfect statements, you can use the word “jañin”.
Lesson 25: I like, I don’t like
In the last lesson you learned the words for ‘with me,’ ‘with you,’ etc. These words can also mean ‘in my opinion,’ ‘in your opinion,’ etc. You can use this meaning with the words for ‘good’ (‘eṃṃan’) and ‘bad’ (‘nana’) to make sentences like ‘I like it,’ ‘I don’t like it’
Lesson 24: With
The word in Marshallese for ‘with’ is ‘ippān.’ However, it changes when you say ‘with me,’ ‘with you,’ etc.
Lesson 23: House of, time of, place of
In Marshallese in order to say a phrase like ‘school time’ you would say instead ‘time of school’ (like in Spanish or French).
Lesson 22: Possessives
In Marshallese there are words for ‘my,’ ‘your,’ ‘his,’ ‘her,’ etc. These are called ‘possessives.’ Marshallese makes no distinction between ‘my’ vs. ‘mine,’ ‘your’ vs. ‘yours’ etc. It has the same word for both.
Lesson 21: Definite and Indefinite Articles, and Plurals
In Marshallese the word for ‘a’ or ‘an’ is the same as ‘one’: juon. Unlike in English, if you have more than one of the noun (a plural noun), the noun stays the same.
Lesson 20: More about wh-questions
If you want to ask where something or someone is, remember that you must use ‘pād’ which means ‘to be located.’
Lesson 19: Wh-questions
In this lesson you will learn how to say questions with question words like ‘who,’ ‘what,’ and ‘where.’ These are called wh-questions because they have a question word that usually starts with ‘wh.’
Lesson 18: Can you?, Yes I can, No I can’t
This lesson will introduce you to the word ‘know’ in Marshallese and its many other uses. The word for ‘know’ in Marshallese is ‘jeḷā.’ To say ‘don’t know,’ you can say ‘jab jeḷā’ or ‘jaje’ or ‘ñak.’