Мы с Андреем

[pne]

In English or German, when talking about two people doing something together (one of them being myself), I'd say something along the lines of John and I went to the beach / Karl und ich waren gestern in München—that is, with "I" in the singular.

However, I learned that Russian uses, instead, a construction of the form Мы с Андреем: literally, "we with Andrew" rather than "Andrew and I".

So I was interested to read that Niuean apparently also uses this form; an example sentence in Seiter's Studies in Niuean Syntax reads:

Kini	e	maua	mo	Maka	e	māla
clear	Erg	we,Du,Ex	with	Maka	Abs	plantation
'Maka and I are clearing the plantation'

"We(two) with Maka" for "Maka and I" looks like the same construction as Russian uses. Nifty!

Comments

[nakedcelt.livejournal.com]

Māori has a similar construction, but even more curious.

For instance, to say "My brother and I eat kumara", the phrase is:

E kai kūmara ana māua ko taku teina.

Analysis:

E ... ana : habitual (in some dialects also continuous)

kai kūmara : eat kūmara — the lack of case markers and articles indicates that "eating kūmara" is a verbal phrase, rather than verb + object

māua : 1duEx

ko : copula used in stative sentences (I'm not sure if that's the correct term; I mean sentences which, in English, would have "to be" as the main verb) where the complement is a proper or a definite noun

taku teina : my younger-same-sex-sibling

To convey the construction in translation you'd have to say something like "We — that is, my brother and I — eat kumara."