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- "Tunapumzika saa saba mchana"
15 Comments
You need to learn about Swahili time. First you have to get used to the idea that the day begins at sunrise, not in the middle of the night. That's perfectly logical, especially if you live near the equator, where the sun always rises at what we call 6 am and sets 12 hours later. So you could think of sunrise as 'hour 0' of the new day. When one hour of daylight has passed (at our 7 am) it is 'hour 1', "saa moja" and after two hours (at our 8 am) it is 'hour 2', "saa mbili".
See this helpful video lesson that counts you through the whole day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc9NBLwxtSA
Swahili time uses a 12-hour clock, so when you get to sunset at hour 12, "saa kumi na mbili" (or 6 pm to us), you start again at hour 1, which takes you through the 12 hours of darkness. In this question, "saa saba mchana" (afternoon) specifies that you mean 7 hours after sunrise, which is our 1 pm. If it was 7 hours after sunset, you would say "saa saba usiku" (night), which is our 1 am.
NOTE: They don't actually say 'hour 0' for 6 am. They actually say "saa kumi na mbili alfajiri" ('hour 12 dawn'). I just find it easier to think of it as hour 0, probably because I live in a place that uses the 24-hour clock, where midnight is represented as 00:00.
There are lots of ways to get your head around Swahili time. A quick fix if you use the 12-hour clock is just to add or subtract 6 hours from the given Swahili time. (So for saa saba, 7 - 6 = 1 o'clock.)
Tha's what I'm thinking. I wish we had a native to check this stuff. There are far too many ambiguities and mistakes in this version of Duo, more than any other version!
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I think it was rushed out so Luis could say "we now have an African language in beta!" at some talk he was giving. If they'd been able to wait for the audio, Brandon might have had more time to look things over and make corrections whilst waiting.
Is it wrong if one says 'one o'clock' instead of just 'one'. As its a time statement 'saa' I would have thought it a good translation.
It is a good answer and should be accepted. It was marked wrong for me too (30 June 2018), so I reported it.
Now accepted, presumably, as it is shown as the answer here. (Dec 2019).
We are resting at one in the afternoon should be accepted. One in afternoon is not English. It should be one in THE afternoon.
Also accepted now (Dec 2019), as shown in the answer here. All that reporting pays off eventually!
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'we rest ...' implies something that is done habitually for which we surely should say 'sisi hupumzika ....' Would not 'we are resting' be a better translation? I thought so but it was rejected.
