"How is your afternoon Rehema?"
Translation:Habari za mchana wako Rehema?
23 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
2189
I don't get the difference between "za" and "ya"
I the discussion the correct answer is
"Habari za mchana Rehema? "
but in the exercise with triple selection the correct answer was
"Habari ya mchana Rehema? "
And in some previous exercise when I wtote "ya" it was marked as a typo with correct "za"
("Habari *za asubuhi, dada?")
I believe za is agreement for a plural noun, and ya, for a single noun. It seems that habari in Swahili can be either plural or singular, depending perhaps (I think I read something like that in these forums somewhere) on the specific country where it is spoken.
As for your answers being 'corrected' from ya to za or vice versa, I think that is just a case of the course not yet having accepted all alternatives that it should. It's particularly annoying for these cases where it is not counted as a proper mistake, but just a typo, as it does not give you the option to report your answer as a possible alternative, and one would have to select "other" and add a bit of text explaining the situation... but it might still be worth it to help the course improve further.
I don't see either word above. It just says Habari za mchana Rehema?
If you saw it with mchana wako it's because mchana is a class 3 noun, taking the verb concord u- and the possessive concord w-. The li- and l- concords are only used with class 5 nouns such as gari, jiko, jicho etc.
mti wangu = my tree
mchana wako = your afternoon (I'm not sure how idiomatic that is though)
gari langu = my car
jicho lako = your eye
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Swahili belongs to the group of Bantu languages. Bantu languages have this syntax of placing nouns before [possessive] pronouns.
Examples:
- Nyanja: Bwanji ambuya wako? (Literally: How is your grandma?)
- Swahili: Habari ya mchana wako? (Literally: How is your afternoon?)
The word wako literally means your or of yours.
Looking at the components:
- In the Nyanja example:
Bwanji simply means How's, ambuya simply means [the] grandma and wako means [of] your[s].
- In the Swahili example:
Habari ya means How is, mchana means [the] afternoon, wako means [of] your[s].
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Alexis 237541, I agree. I have to adjust. I've been learning Spanish for the last 4 years. I now have to train my brain to learn a different way because Duolingo teaches Swahili in a different manner than it teaches Spanish. In Swahili, word order is definitely different from Spanish or American. I must make a paradigm shift.