"Tanzania we have rhinoceros"

Translation: Tanzania tuna vifaru

[billhatcher]

Shouldn't the english be, "In Tanzania, we have rhinoceroses."? And if so, would that make a possible translation, "Katika Tanzania, tuna vifaru."?

[RinnyJ]

I definitely agree on the English translation. We might say Tanzania has rhinos, where I think Swahili allows the verb to identify the nation with the people. Tanzania has rhinos, but we are Tanzania, so "Tanzania have rhinos." It doesn't work in English, but that's what I think is happening.

[AGreatUserName]

Tanzania tuna vifaru is fine. Tanzania, like all place names, can be used as a locative without any modification. It's very common to say nchini Tanzania ("in-the-country Tanzania"). I think katika Tanzania is probably OK, but not so common.

[Kaarina481764]

Simply un grammatical English.

[Renata725212]

I guess they try to bypass grammatical form " in Tanzania" which is still far a way before us. Katika Tanzania tuna vifaru.

[billhatcher]

Or perhaps, "Katika Tanzania, tunavyo vifaru"?

[Renata725212]

Looks proper but for that I will answer you when I will get more avanced O.K ? :)

[AGreatUserName]

To say "In Tanzania", you just say Tanzania or nchini Tanzania. Place names are inherently able to be used as locatives and to be clear about it, you can use the locative form of town, city, country, continent, etc. (kijijini, mjini, jijini, nchini, barani) before the place name.

Adding the suffix on the end of na is generally only used for pronominal situations (eg. tunavyo = we have them) or for special emphasis, so tuna would be much more common. If you do want to use the suffix on the end for the object, it wouldn't be -vyo though because rhinoceroses are animate; it'd be tunao.

[aboutpurpo]

How do I know when to use "tuna wa" rather than just "tuna?"

[AGreatUserName]

Where have you seen tuna wa? It doesn't make any sense to me and the only example of it in the glosbe database is in the phrase tuna wa bluefin = bluefin tuna ...

So, I guess ... tuna when you mean "we have" and tuna wa when you mean "tuna of" ... ;-)

[AGreatUserName]

• Houston, we have lift-off
• Tanzania, we have rhinoceros