If you want to say "his district," "her land," or "their home" in Tuvan, you need to add an appropriate ending to the word (Step 1) and, if you want to, you can use a possessive pronoun before the noun, but is optional (Step 2).

Listen and repeat the phrases from the Song #2.

Step 1. As you can see from the examples above, 3rd person possession is expressed via various endings (-ы, -зы, -и, -зи). The table with all the possible endings for all the different types of words is provided below (Salzynmaa, 1980).

How do you use this table? For example, if you want to say "their camel," first you find out the word for "camel" in Tuvan. It is "теве." What is the last letter of the word? A vowel. What is the vowel in the last syllable of the word. It is a vowel "е." The table tells us that we need to add "-зи" to the word "теве" to say "their camel." Voila! "Тевези."

Step 2. In addition to the appropriate ending, you can also indicate to whom the object belongs using possessive pronouns.

ооӊ - his, her

оларныӊ - their

However, the possessive pronoun is optional in these phrases:

To continue studying Song #2 and "where" questions in Tuvan, please click here.