You now know how to say ‘goodbye’ in Arapaho: heetce’noohóbeen or heetce’noohobé3en. What’s the difference between these two words? You know that they both mean literally ‘We will see you again’ or ‘I will see you again.’

By this point, you also know that the heet- indicates future tense, and that the ce’- is a common prefix meaning ‘again.’ The actual verb is noohob-, meaning ‘see’ or more specifically ‘see someone.’ This verb is a transitive verb, because it always involves two different people: someone doing the seeing, and someone being seen (I see you, we see you, etc). The endings of the words above indicate who’s seeing, and who’s being seen:

 

heet-ce’-noohob-é3en	heet-ce’-noohób-een
future-again-see-I/you	future-again-see-we/you

 

So at this point, you can see that -é3en means ‘I’m doing (something) to you’ and -een means ‘we’re doing (something) to you.’ So Arapaho TA verbs work just like all the other verbs: they have suffixes to indicate who’s involved in the action. So let’s take another TA verb, and use those same suffixes. How about ni’eeneb- ‘like someone’? How would you say ‘I like you’ and ‘we like you’? The answer is:

 

nii’eeneb-é3en	I like you
nii’eenéb-een	We like you
(Pay attention to the accents: they always work this way, on all verbs)

 

So as you see, the suffixes transfer from one verb to the other, just like with all the other Arapaho verbs. The only difference is that they indicate both an actor/doer, and the person being acted on/having something done to them.

 

 

Go on to Part Two of this Lesson