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 lana minuli - "I ate fruit yesterday"

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

hon ten nelo ne men mi le makan in kuwosi "Tonight I will eat fruit", (lit. as for this dark time, I eat fruit)

When time is stated through context, the rest of the verbs are then relative to that time. The thematic relation an can be used for a similar capability.

hon ten nelo ne men mi le makan minuli mulu je tiju ten in kuwosi "By tonight I will have eaten fruit ten times"

In this example, it doesn't say "tonight I have eaten fruit ten times", which wouldn't make sense because tonight hasn't happened yet. Instead the verb makan minuli mulu is interpreted as if it is already in the future context of "tonight".

hon ten nelo minuli men mi le lo ke insu je makan - "Last night I went to the restaurant"

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 [event](https://dictionary.kokanu.com/event?lang=en)\ ta [event](https://dictionary.kokanu.com/event?lang=en), ..., with the an preposition dangling. Another option is to use hon ten je ta [event](https://dictionary.kokanu.com/event?lang=en)\ ta mi le makan in kuwosi an, men mi le pasan - "When I eat fruit, I am happy"
hon ten ta mi le makan minuli in kuwosi an, men mi le pasan - "When I ate fruit, I was happy"

See how when the context is put in the past, the main verb is also interpreted as being past tense, just like the earlier example with hon ten nelo ne.

hon ten ta mi le lo putuci ke insu ta le po makan an, men mi le in mani po kuwosi - "When I go to the grocery store later, I will buy fruit"
hon ten je ta mi le lo putuci ke insu ta le po makan an, men mi le in mani po kuwosi - "When I go to the grocery store later, I will buy fruit"

Specifying Topics

If providing time as context 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 junja in wan, lekin jan tope mi le junja in nanku! - "Speaking of dogs, I have one but my friend has four!"

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

This is a somewhat awkward example, as it is more clearly stated using mi le kanisa ta tu le tope, but it is still correct

hon te kota tuntan je Kokanu men tu o teka in pata ta non Kokanu le lika. - Roughly, "On the topic of Kokanu grammar, read this guide written by the Kokanu community."

More literally, it's "In the context of speaking Kokanu correctly, you should read this document that the Kokanu community wrote."

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

Again, tense is fairly ambiguous here.

Conditionals

When providing an entire event as context, it is usually interpreted as a conditional ("if [event](https://dictionary.kokanu.com/event?lang=en)\ mi le makan in kuwosi ... or hon lantan le hunsi ...

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

The tense of this sentence is ambiguous.

hon lantan le hunsi minuli men mi le lun nile kate in ja - "If the car was red, I would have painted it blue"

Because the context is past tense, the main sentence is interpreted as what would have happened in that hypothetical past.

hon tu le ju ta le lo ke insu je makan men mi le ju ta le lo kan tu - "If you want go to the restaurant, then I want to go with you