nato / ta

The inclusive genitive pronoun nato is used when the listener is included in the group. It serves three primary roles:

1. Possession: nato follows a noun to show ownership.
Example: balay nato (our house—yours and mine). You can also use the pre-posed form atong before the noun: atong balay. (Note: while the grammar tag groups these together, atong is inclusive, whereas among is exclusive). Note that atong is a contraction of the possessive ato and the ligature (ato nga balay). The independent or predicative possessive form is atoa (ours), used when saying "That is ours" (Atoa kana). The short clitic form ta is also a standard grammatical alternative for possession (e.g., kwarta ta).

2. Agent of Action: In non-actor focus sentences (like those using the prefix gi- for completed patient focus or the suffix -on), nato identifies who performed the action.
Example: Gikaon nato ang isda. (We ate the fish).

3. After Prepositions: After prepositions like para (for) or uban (with), the formal oblique form kanato is used, but in everyday conversation, nato is frequently used as a colloquial alternative.
Example: Para nato kini. (This is for us).

Word Order (Enclitic Rule):
The enclitic nato is strongly attracted to the second position. If a sentence starts with a negator (like wala or dili) or certain adverbs, nato must jump to immediately follow that first word.
Example: Wala nato kan-a ang isda. (We did not eat the fish). Note that in standard Cebuano, a patient-focus verb negated by wala takes the dependent/imperative suffix -a, though you will frequently hear the colloquial wala nato gikaon in everyday speech.

Important Note on "ta":
In Cebuano, ta has three distinct uses. 1) It is the short form for kita (absolutive/topic 'we'). You will see ta used as the subject in actor-focus sentences like Mangaon ta (Let's eat). 2) It acts as a 1st-person singular genitive pronoun ('by me') that replaces ko or nako specifically when the focused pronoun is the 2nd-person singular ka ('you'), as seen in the ta ka pattern (e.g., Gihigugma ta ka. - I love you). The actual portmanteau of ta + ka is tika (or taka). 3) It is the standard short/clitic form of nato (inclusive 'our' or 'by us'). It is used for possession (e.g., kwarta ta) and as an agent of action (e.g., Gikaon ta ang isda = We ate the fish).

Inclusive vs. Exclusive:
If you use nato, you include the listener. If you want to exclude the listener, use the exclusive genitive namo or the pre-posed form among. This distinction applies across all grammatical roles (e.g., Agent of Action: nato vs. namo; Prepositions: para nato vs. para namo).