The Swo have a very understated way of identifying a nominal as being the one that has become known through talking about it: They use the word "there", (/tê/ [tɪ14]).
Example: mòdò tê, ([mʊ4rʊ4 tɪ14]) "the person there (known, definite, being talked about".
This way of identifying is the noun as definite does not indicate anything about its noun class.
If a noun is modified by a relative clause, however, the definite article that follows the relative clause does get inflected for the noun class of the noun, however. In the accompanying table, you can see the 8 noun classes followed by the "relative article", an example and a translation. For those wanting to know where the relative pronoun ("who", "that") is, it is a tone change in the first word of the relative clause. An initial low tone in that clause becomes high, showing that it is the beginning of the relative clause. A translation in French follows.
Note that there is an abbreviated form of the relative article for nouns in classes 1,2,3 and 7.
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