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Dog and cat

Two new words today, but they come as a matched pair — one for the dog people, one for the cat people — and they hook onto sentences you've owned for weeks. A warm, easy five minutes.

1 · Say this

mi ama cho i mau (mee · AH-ma · CHO · ee · maow) I love dog and cat.

You already know mi (I, Lesson 1), ama (love, Lesson 1), and i (and, Lesson 28). The two new words are cho — dog — and mau — cat. String them together with your old joiner and you've named the whole household menagerie in one breath.

2 · A closer look: cho and mau

Two plain nouns, the kind of word you point at and grin. cho is dog; mau is cat. No new grammar rides in with them — they slot into the same spots a noun has always taken.

Amatu Says Means
cho "CHO" (rhymes with "go") dog
mau "maow" cat

Watch how fast they go to work with the words you already own:

mi ama cho — I love dog. mi ama mau — I love cat. cho i mau — dog and cat. la ama cho — she loves dog. cho li pai — the dog is good.

And one little joke that writes itself — point at the two of them: cho i mau, and you've got the whole pet bucket in three short words.

🌍 You already know this The only genuinely new thing today is two nouns. The joiner i (and) is straight from Lesson 28; ama (love) has been with you since Lesson 1; la (she/he/they) since Lesson 13. Drop in cho and mau and a dozen sentences light up at once — that's the whole idea of a growing vocabulary: a new word, not a new rule.

⚠️ Watch out mau is one beat — the OW in "flower" with an m in front. Think: the meow in "meow" is that same OW. And cho is one crisp beat: "CHO" — the ch as in "chair," the o clean and pure like "go" or Spanish "no." Don't let the o drift into the English "chow" diphthong — Amatu vowels never glide at the end.

3 · Your turn

Out loud:

  1. I love dog → mi ama cho
  2. I love cat → mi ama mau
  3. I love dog and cat → mi ama cho i mau
  4. the dog is good → cho li pai

4 · Tonight's phrase

mi ama cho i mau — I love dog and cat — two fresh words, one old joiner, and a sentence that already feels like home.

30-second check

Cover the page. (1) Say I love dog. (2) Say I love cat. (3) Join them: I love dog and cat. Three for three? Then today's two little words are already yours — and the cat people and the dog people both got their animal.

⬅️ Back: Lesson 31 — But · ➡️ Next: Lesson 33 — Come and go