transcript:
Most people thats been around the language are familiar with singular possessive Samoan pronouns like la’u, lo’u, lau, lou, lana, lona
But what if we wanted to say our, your plural, theirs? To do that we have to combine a plural pronoun with a nounThese are plural Samoan pronouns for 3 or more people
Matou, tatou, tou or outou, and latou
To make these possessive pronouns, we just put a noun behind them
Since theres no action and we’re just identifying the noun, dont forget the O noun tense marker.
O Matou fale, O tatou aiga, O tou penitala, O latou taimi
So we/us turns into our…there is a slight contextual difference between matou and tatou, there’s other videos on that, but they both mean our as a possessive
Outou or tou or you all turns into your plural or yalls
And latou or them turns into their.
So O matou fale is our houses, O tatou aiga is our families, O tou penitala yalls pencils, O latou taimi is their times…like what’s their times of availability
The way its stated here…O matou fale is multiple houses owned by us,
To make these each a singular possession owned by multiple people, we will need to limit the noun. we need to put our limiter in front of the pronoun.
O le matou fale….Our singular house
O le tatou aiga…. Our singular family
O le tou penitala….Your or yalls pencil
O le latou taimi…. Their singular specific time
There is a more formal or traditional way to form possessives using a/o class but that’s a different video.
