Lessons · 12 of 18

Whose it is

My, your, and our live inside the word — six endings that every noun can wear.

Karachay rarely says "my father" with two words. The owner lives inside the noun, as an ending — and kin words almost never appear without one:

• atam — my father
• atang — your father
• atası — his / her father
• atabız — our father
• atağız — you all's father
• ataları — their father

The same endings carry a lot of feeling in the wider language: ana tilibiz — "our mother tongue" — is how Karachay speakers talk about the language itself, and curtubuz is "our homeland." Notice the vowels rounding to match the word, exactly as lesson 1 promised.

You can still add the pronoun's owner form in front for emphasis — meni atam "my father (mine!)" — but the ending alone does the job.

Owners meet the cases

The case endings from lesson 11 attach after the owner, with one twist: after "his / her", a little n slips in before the ending. A real saying shows it — anasından "from his mother" — and place phrases like katında ("at its side") use it constantly. After "my" and "your" the to-form shortens to a bare vowel: atıma — "to my horse."