Endo

Thomas Payne

Endo is a Nilo Saharan language of the Southern Nilotic family. It is spoken by approximately 45,000 people in the Rift Valley of Central Kenya. There are 61 distinct indigenous languages spoken in Kenya today.

Endo is a language for which "tone" is very important. The different tones are written as marks above some letters. For example, the letters á, í and ó are all pronounced with high tone. The letters à, ì and ò are all pronounced with low tone. The letters ê and î have a "falling tone." That is, the tone starts high and ends low. The letter ë is pronounced with low tone in kind of a "breathy" voice. If there is no mark over a letter, it is pronounced with "mid tone," half way in between high and low.

As with many people groups around the world, stories are very important in the everyday life of the Endo people. Instead of watching television or going to movies, Endo families spend hours in the evenings reciting and creating folk stories about a time in history when animals could talk. The following are some sentences out of an Endo folk story, followed by their English translations. In this story, the main characters are Elephant and Hare:

	1. Kícho Pëëlyòn.	'Elephant came.'
	2. Kícho Kíplêkwà.	'Hare came.'
	3. Kílëchí Kíplêkwà Pëëlyón.	'Hare said to Elephant . . .'
	4. Kílëchí Pëëlyón Kíplêkwà.	'Hare said to Elephant . . .'
	5. Kílëchí Kìplêkwà Pëëlyòn.	'Elephant said to Hare . . .'
	6. Kílëchí Pëëlyòn Kìplêkwà.	'Elephant said to Hare . . .'
	7. Kípka píích.	'People arrived.'
	8. Kíro píích.	'People saw (him/her/it).'
	9. Kíro pîîch.	'He/she saw people.'

Your first task is to translate the following into English:

	10. Kíro Kìplêkwà
	11. Kíro Kíplêkwà

Now, there are two ways to say each of the following two English sentences in Endo. In this part of the puzzle you must construct the two Endo sentences by selecting each word from the drop-down lists. Remember that the forms of the words and the order are important:

	People said to Elephant . . .	1st translation:
		2nd translation:

	Hare said to people . . .	1st translation:
		2nd translation:

The following English sentences have only one Endo translation each. If the translation has only two words, select the correct words in the first two positions, and choose "--none--" for the third word:

	He/she said to him/her . . .
	Elephant saw people.