yeah the poster is trying to teach you the prefix for small, but definitely a lot of people have gotten stuck there :/ glad you liked it up to there though!
Viewing post in Themengi (Gamejam prototype) comments
I really liked the game but I had the same problem - I understood that the adjective was a prefix but was expecting a prefix on the second animal being the equivalent of large, like small-animal -> big-animal instead of small-animal -> animal. I thought qy- (in qyquu) meant 'big' and ki- was more of a negator (kiqy- = 'not big'). I did get around it though and the game was very fun! Very clever idea. If you were to expand the game, maybe you could have error messages in the language as well :D
Just noticed that someone else (ThePseudonym) had a similar thing about the 'ki-' modifier; I agree with their other points too. Again, I really like this game, great job!