hon

This particle is used to attach context phrases to your sentences. With hon, you can place your context in any location within the sentence just like all of the other thematic relation markers. "Context" can be a wide variety of things. We will discuss using this marker for specifying a relative time for the entire sentence, evidentiality, and conditionals.

Relative Time

You can use the context marker to provide details about the timing of the event.

mi le makan in kuwosi hon kin matin - "I ate fruit yesterday"

This could be interpreted as "a few days ago" or "in the past days", interpreting kin as a plural, but that is often better represented with lan kin or jati kin.

hon ten nelo je kin kenca men mi le makan in kuwosi - "Tonight I will eat fruit" (lit. as for the dark time of the present day, I eat fruit)
hon ten nelo matin men mi le lo ki insu je makan - "Last night I went to the restaurant" (lit. as for the past dark time, I go to building of food)

Times are not always relative to simple ideas like "today", "tomorrow", or "in three days". Sometimes, you need to talk about something relative to a specific event. For this, we state the context as literally "time that ...", with the pi preposition dangling (or with ja being used to close it off).

hon ten ta mi le makan matin in kuwosi an, men mi le pasan - "When I ate fruit, I was happy"

Keep in mind, any references to time can also be made with the preposition pi. This is especially true when referencing specific times that things happened.

For example the most natural translation for the sentence:

"When I saw her, I knew that she had stole my cookies"

Would be:

pi ta mi le teka in ja, mi le wisan ta ja le alu in makan satu mi

Using hon in this sentence would actually have a different meaning, more akin to "Given that I saw her, I knew that she had stole my cookies".

Since hon can always be replaced with pi if time is being specified, depending on the context, using hon instead of pi can signify that you're talking about the time rather than putting the statement in the context of the time. However, in most situations, it's clear from context whether someone is putting the specific time as a topic of the sentence, or putting the sentence in the context of it.

Wait, hon can be used to specify topics?

Specifying Topics

If providing time as context (sometimes) makes a when-clause, what happens when you provide something that isn't a time? You end up simply specifying a topic. This can be used to introduce a new topic, to specify a relative concept in which to frame the following sentence, or to change topics similar to the English phrase "speaking of which...".

hon pawo men mi le han in wan, lekin matuwa mi le han in nanku! - "Speaking of dogs, I have one, but my dad has four!"

tu le tope hon kanisa mi - literally "In the context of my thoughts, you are good", or roughly "you are good imo"

Within Kokanu communities, hon kanisa mi is quite a common expression. It it sometimes, when it makes sense in context, shortened to hon mi (lit. "as for me").

hon te kota tuntan je Kokanu, men tu o teka in ne pata ikasi. - Roughly, "On the topic of Kokanu grammar, read this guide." (lit. "In the context of speaking Kokanu correctly, you should read this learning document")

hon lantan te hunsi matin, men mi le lun nile in ja - "About the car that was red, I am making it blue"

Conditionals

When providing a subordinate clause as context, it is usually interpreted as saying "given that". However, if the hypotheticality marker kate is used, or in certain contexts, it is interpreted as a conditional. kate is nearly always needed if the situation is hypothetical.

hon ta lantan le hunsi kate, men mi le lun nile in ja - "If the car is red, I will make it blue"

The tense of this sentence is unspecified, and the hon statement is more saying that in any context where the statement is true, the action will be performed. If you're referring to a specific situation, it's more common to say:
pi ta lantan le hunsi, men mi le lun nile in ja - "When the car is red, I will paint it blue"

Whether or not this statement is hypotethetical is ambiguous and up to context.

If you want to say given something, you would use hon without kate.

hon ta lantan le hunsi, men mi le lun nile in ja - "Given that the car is red, I will make it blue"

Keep in mind that this statement could be in any tense. It could be "Given that the car was red, I made it blue", or "Given that the car will be red, I will make it blue".

Examples

hon ta tu le ju kate te lo ki insu je makan,, men mi le ju te lo kan tu - "If you want go to the restaurant, then I want to go with you"
hon ta na le sankan men lan mi o kosan in pan tuntan te po na pan katin - "Given that that's important, we should create a solution for that problem"
Inkilisi le katin hon nin Nihon - "English is hard for Japanese people"
hon ten nelo melon men mi le ju konen te no lo ki jan enteken - "Tonight I'll probably not want to go the park"