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- Topic: Swahili >
- "Habari za nyumbani bibi ?"
15 Comments
How come sometimes the answer is "how is the home" but other times it's "how is your home?" Is there a way to tell the difference, or do they mean basically the same thing?
In Swahili, it's not indicated at all. There are cases where English really loves to use possessives, such as "How was your day?" In Swahili, you don't use "your" here but it's really weird in English without it. You wouldn't say "How was the day?" most of the time.
The course is sometimes a bit literal and sometimes a bit more idiomatic, but most of the time, when one thing is allowed but not another, it's because the course was rushed to come out early and they haven't added all the various alternative possible answers that there should be ... which can be a big job because for some sentences, there can be about fifty possible translations.
Anyway, if anything like this comes up again, use the report feature.
It didn't accept "house", only "home". We id often use these interchangeably in the U.S. when referring to ones own home/house.
I thought "ya" was used for singular and "za" was used for plural ... anyone know if I'm just wrong or why za is being used here? thanks!
When using habari, you can use both ya and za, if habari is in singular it's more specific, whereas in habari in plural is more general. so you can use both habari ya nyumbani and habari za nyumbani. the latter would be more common in this context.
"How is the home..." Makes more sense in English than "How is home..." but it is marked wrong.
See above remark about rushing to get the program out. It's focused on the Swahili part, not on the English :(
