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- Topic: Swahili >
- "Paa ni mdogo"
8 Comments
Duo needs to be consistent with articles. Sometimes they are correct, and sometimes they are incorrect. It's a bit of a crap shoot which one it will be. The two questions prior to this one, with the exact same sentence structure, it was correct to use them, whereas with this one it was incorrect. No consistency makes it more difficult to actually learn the language. Reported.
paa = duiker (a kind of antelope but not a kind of gazelle)
swala = gazelle
When I leave the article out it's wrong. When I include it it's right?????
Yes. But it's not because of Swahili. It's because of how English treats this sort of sentences. There are three different ways of putting together a "{Noun} is {Adjective}" type of sentences in English with regard to definiteness. You could use either the definite or indefinite article, and you could use no article. If you use the definite article, in this particular sentence, you are talking about a specific gazelle, and if you use the indefinite article, you are talking about some not until now mentioned gazelle, or you are talking about gazelles in general. Both of those are OK translations of the Swahili sentence. But the only instance where you leave the article out, is when you are using proper nouns. So, if you translate the sentence as "Gazelle is small", it seems like you are talking about a person or a thing named Gazelle, not about an animal of the type gazelle.
