NACLO 2026 - Problem MCan You Speak Aikanã?

Invitational round | 15 points | N/A | Problem statement | Official solution | Tags: Phrase translation

Each sentence here contains two sub-sentences, connected by "and", and their Aikanã translations each contain two words. So naturally, one Aikanã word corresponds to one sentence.

First there's a glaring issue: "apaepü" and "apaena" both mean "he sees you unexpectedly", but have different endings. In fact, all other sentences have the first word alternate between "-pü" and "-na":

• -pü
  • I recognize you and I feel jealous.
  • He sees you unexpectedly and he lies.
  • You ban him and you trick me.
  • I am warm and I dream weirdly.
• -na
  • You find me and I smell good.
  • He sleeps and you are angry with him.
  • He sees you unexpectedly and you see him unexpectedly.
  • He remembers me and I hate him.
  • You are thirsty and he is angry with me.
  • I remember you and he finds me.

The pattern is clear: in the first group, the two sentences have the same subject, while in the second group, they have different subjects. So this marker does not indicate any part of speech.

Similarly, all the second words end in "ẽ", so we can remove that suffix as well. The remaining words strictly stand for the subject, verb, and object. First group by the verb. I have applied some discretion and grouped together sentences that have obviously the same stem even if the translations are different.

• feel jealous/ban
  • d[ama] I feel jealous
  • [ama]me you ban him
• hate/be angry with
  • d[enume] I hate him
  • [enume]kea he is angry with me
  • [enume]me you are angry with him
• see unexpectedly/find
  • h[apa] you see him unexpectedly
  • [apa]mea you find me
  • [apa]kea he finds me
  • [apa]e he sees you unexpectedly
• recognize/remember
  • n[ãrüa]e I recognize you
  • [ãrüa]kea he remembers me
  • [ãrüa]kae I remember you
• trick/lie
  • h[aweria]a you trick me
  • [aweria]he he lies

We can now group them by the subject/object:

If we look vertically, there doesn't seem to be any common prefix or suffix, so the subject is a bit complicated. On the other hand, ignore the last row and look horizontally. The first row has the common ending "-a"; the second row has the common ending "-e"; the third row has no common ending. So this is the object marker:

• -a = me
• -e = you
• -∅ = him

Remove these markers and look vertically. Weirdly, we see an alternation between prefix and suffix:

So it appears that the subject can either be a prefix:

• n-/d- = I
• h- = you
• ∅- = he

Or a suffix:

• -ka = I
• -me = you
• -ke/-he = he

How do we select between the two? It's not based on the object, because the you/him entry contains both prefixes and suffixes. However, if you look back at the groups of verbs, notice how there's always a meaning that takes a prefix and the other meaning that takes a suffix. So:

There are a few words for which we don't know the verb root yet.

• yoanea (I smell good): has no n-/d- prefix nor -ka suffix. However, it has the -a suffix ("me" object). So it appears that the subject is marked as the object instead, with the root being "yoane".
• herekaa (I am warm): has no n-/d- prefix nor -ka suffix (there's "-kaa" but we wouldn't be able to explain the extra "a"). However, it again uses the -a suffix, so the subject is also marked as the object here, with the root being "hereka".
• nũpane (I dream weirdly): has the n- prefix, so the root is "ũpane".
• enue (you are thirsty): has no h- prefix nor -me suffix, but has the -e suffix, so the root is "enu" and the subject is marked as the object.
• ãwĩwãhe (he sleeps): has the -he suffix, so the root is "ãwĩwã".

Adding these to the table:

There's one more alternation we haven't explained: the n-/d- prefix for "I", and the -ke/-he suffix for "he".

• For "I", d- and n- have both been used in the no-object condition, so this cannot be conditioned on the object. n- is used with the verbs ãrüa and ũpane, while d- is used with enume and ama. So it appears to be based on whether the first vowel is nasal.
• For "he", -ke is used with ãrüa and enume, while -he is used with ãwĩwã and aweria. There's no phonological pattern here, but -he only appears in the no-object condition while -ke only appears in the "me" object condition, so it appears to be based on the object.

Now we may translate.

1. h-aweria-na

   you-trick(-him)-na

   enu-a-ẽ

   be-thirsty-me-ẽ
   You trick him and I am thirsty.
2. yoane-na

   smell-good(-him)-na

   h-enume-ẽ

   you-hate(-him)-ẽ
   He smells good and you hate him.
3. d-apa-pü

   I-see-unexpectedly(-him)-pü

   ũpane-ka-ẽ

   dream-I-ẽ
   I see him unexpectedly and I dream.
   Note: we've only seen "ũpane" with a prefix subject (which means "dream weirdly"), and by changing the subject marking, a new meaning is derived, so it must have something to do with "dream". The answer key just says "dream"; this is also necessary for (5), because otherwise we can't derive yet another word to translate "dream".
4. n-ãwĩwã-pü

   I-oversleep-pü

   d-aweria-e-ẽ

   I-trick-you-ẽ
   I oversleep and I trick you.
   Note: again, we only know how to translate "sleep" (ãwĩwã with a suffix object), but "oversleep" is not "sleep", and the only process that we know that can derive new verbs is to change the subject marking, so we use a prefix subject here.
5. ama-ke-a-na

   ban-he-me-na

   ũpane-me-ẽ

   dream-you-ẽ
   He bans me and you dream.
6. ãrüa-me-pü

   remember-you(-him)-pü

   hereka-e-ẽ

   be-warm-you-ẽ
   You remember him and you are warm.