Episode 6: Time

Hello! How are things? Today we are going to be talking about time, but before we do I have a few announcements.

1. It’s come to my attention that on the last episode I used a word in the review that I had taken out of the vocab list for that episode and hence never explained. I ask that you please just remember that I am grossly underpaid. However, I apologize.

That word was guereko. This means “to have”. So “I have” is Che aguereko. This verb also has a shorter version, which is reko, which is what all the cool kids use, or at least I do. They’re interchangeable. I once heard a woman use one and then the other two sentences later. There will be a few instances of this, so let’s just establish now that when we have a review where you have to answer with the Guaraní, we’ll use the longer version of the word. But when it comes to listening and replying in English, you may hear one of the two forms. “I got mandioca” could be Che aguereko mandi’o or Che areko mandi’o.

2. Here’s another point on the shorter version theme. We’re going to change it up a little and you might hear on the review some of those personal pronouns, like che or ha’e, go missing. Because the verbs are specific to people in Guaraní, sometimes they just leave off the pronoun if it’s obvious. So “I got mandioca” could just be Areko mandi’o. We’ll keep using pronouns when you have to answer in Guaraní, but in listening, you’ll start to hear some of the sentences without pronouns and you’ll have to infer from which verb beginning is used who we’re talking about. So from Jareko mandi’o you can tell from the ja- beginning that it’s going to be, “We got mandioca.”

3. Want to thank those who sent me e-mails and wish them good luck in your studies of esoteric indiginous languages of South America. As for the rest of you, I’d love to hear from you at guaranime@gmail.com for questions or rave reviews of the podcast. Please keep all complaints to yourself.

4. You may have noticed that the podcast descriptions in iTunes have been looking a little funktified. All these tildes and accents are messing things up. So I will be going about the apparently quite complicated process of cleaning this up. When this is ready, if you’re listening to the podcast on an ipod, you can press the center button four times to see a word list as we go through.

Ok, party time. Wait, we don’t know how to say party time yet, so instead of party it will have to be work. Let’s pretend that I am working day and night, saving up for a teat lift for my pig I work in the morning. I work in the afternoon. I work at night. How do we say these things? Morning, noon, night?

Let’s start with the morning and look at how would we say, “I work during the morning.”

You already know, “I work”. Che amba’apo. Now we need to know how to say, “during the morning.” Well, the word for morning is pyhareve.

Now the word you’re going to use that kind of means “during” is going to be a caboose that you latch on to whatever time you’re talking about. That caboose is ...kue. So, “during the morning” is pyharevekue. And “I work during the morning” is Che amba’apo pyharevekue.

What would be “We all work in the morning?” And remember that mba’apo is a nasal verb. Ñande ñamba’apo phyharevekue.

Side note: There are a few times when you’re not going to use the ...kue. For example, when something already happened, people usually use the ...pe. We’ll learn how to use past tense in a minute. You can also use ...pe when it’s just a momentary thing, more like “in the morning” instead of “during the morning”. Also, sometimes people just leave it off. “I’ll see ya in the morning” could just be Jajotopata pyhareve. And, as usually, people are really pretty loose with the rules on this. Also, I have found that the answer largely depends on who you ask.

After the morning you have the early afternoon, mid-day, when you should be eating lunch then napping in the hammock. They call it “siesta” in Spanish. In Guaraní that is asaje. So how would you say, “during siesta.” asajekue. How would you say, “Let’s go during siesta”? Jaha asajekue.

A little later you have the afternoon. This is kind of weird to Americans, because we don’t break up the afternoon into two parts. But this is the later of the two, when you’ve woken up from the nap and are drinking terere. That’s going to be called ka’aru. That’s a chopped word with an apostrophe right in the middle. Ka’aru. So “during the afternoon” is ka’arukue. How would you say, “I will come during the afternoon?” Che ajuta ka’arukue.

Next you naturally have night time. This is weird and confusing because the word for night sounds almost exactly like the morning. Night is pyhare. How I remember the difference is that “ve” means “see” in Spanish. And since the word for morning has that “ve” on the end of it, I think, you see in the morning but not at night. Pyhareve, morning. Pyhare, night.

There are other ways to describe when you do something, such as “I’m working right now.” The word for “now” is ko’ãga. Something that you’ll see a few different places is that ko. Ko means “this”. So you could kind of break this down to think, this second, now. How would you say, using hína as well for the -ing ending, “I’m working right now.” Che amba’apo hina ko’ãga.

Another example of ko meaning “this” is the word for “today”, ko’ára. Ko meaning “this” and ára meaning “day”. This day, today. How would you say, “Today we will all work”? Ko’ára ñande ñamba’apota.

Side bar tip: You can also use ko with pyhareve to mean “this morning”, ko pyhareve. Or with asaje or ka’aru or pyhare. “Tonight” would then be what? “Ko pyhare.”

To say yesterday you say kuehe. Kuehe, all my troubles seemed so far away. And well, if we’re talking about yesterday we’re going to need to know how to use the past tense. Guaraní has an interesting system for using the past tense. There are a few different cabooses you could use, depending on if you’re talking about yesterday or back in your Nam days. Today we’ll just talk about the most common one. This is the caboose ...kuri. “I worked yesterday” is going to be Che amba’apo kuri kuehe.

Here’s a little tip on that one. If you mention the time frame before the verb, let’s say “Yesterday I worked.” If you’ve already said yesterday, you don’t have to add the ...kuri. Many things are like this in Guaraní. It’s like, if we get what you’re saying, you don’t have to worry about grammatical points. So “Yesterday I worked” could be Kuehe amba’apo kuri or just Kuehe amba’apo. We would never in English say “Yesterday I work”, but it flies in Guaraní.

And let’s round out the vocab with the word for tomorrow, which is ko’ẽrõ . So in looking this up, it breaks down really interestingly. Ko’e is the verb which means “to wake up”, and rõ is the conditional, kind of like, if I wake up...then there will be tomorrow. We’ll learn about those words later, so don’t worry about remembering them now, I just love the way words are made up in Guaraní. Let’s practice with, “Tomorrow you all will work”. Ko’ẽrõ peẽ pemba’apota.

You already know another time-oriented phrase, which is Ha upéi? This literally means “and then?” People use it as a greeting, like “What’s up?” But you can also use it when people are telling a story. So I was met this hottie... “Ha upéi?” Or you can just use it when talking. “Amba’apokuri pyharevekue ha upéi asẽ.” What does that mean? “I worked in the morning and then I went out.”

Now let’s practice.

1. I’ll do it tonight.
Che ajapota ko pyharekue.

2. They did it yesterday.
Ha’ekuéra ojapo kuri kuehe.

3. Auxi cleaned during the morning.
Auxi omopotĩ kuri pyharevekue.

4. Let’s go now.
Jaha ko’ãga.

5. I will speak to Rossana tomorrow.
Che añe’ẽta Rossanape ko’ẽrõ.

Now switching to Guaraní first.

6. Jajotopata ko pyhare.
We’ll see each other tonight.

7. Ajuta asajekue.
I’ll come during siesta.

8. Ha’ekuéra osẽta ko pyhare.
They’re going to go out tonight.

9. Che ha’u y ko pyhareve.
I drank water this morning.

10. Oĩkuri mandi’o.
There was mandioca.


1.pyhareve: morning
2. asaje: siesta
3. ka’aru: afternoon
4. pyhare: night
5. ...kue: during
6. ...kuri: past tense
7. ko’ãga: now
8. ko’ára: today
9. ko’ẽrõ: tomorrow
10. kuehe: yesterday
*guereko: to have
*reko: to have