- Forum >
- Topic: Swahili >
- "I went to the farm then I ha…
"I went to the farm then I harvested tomatoes."
Translation:Nilienda shambani halafu nikavuna nyanya.
12 Comments
442
The notes for this module state that the infix for the first in the sequence should be 'li' as usual, while subsequent verbs take 'ka'. This the case in this example but not in other questions in the exercise. This is an inconsistency that I can't fathom. Can somebody comment please?
Yeah, it is redundant, but redundant doesn't mean incorrect.
To go off topic and get technical, the plural "s" in "three apples" is redundant too, since the word "three" already tells us explicitly that apples is plural. In some languages, such as Turkish, you don't use the plural form of nouns with a number or some other quantity words because it's redundant and it's simply not done. In English, you have to. I've only mentioned this to indicate that "redundant" doesn't mean "incorrect" or "unnecessary". Some redundancies are obligatory, some are forbidden, and some are optional. It depends on the language and what exactly we're talking about.
Languages often contain a lot of redundancy - too little redundancy means that single sounds can contain a lot of meaning that could make or break whether the message is understood or not, and that adds extra listener strain or causes communication to break down under suboptimal hearing conditions. Often, redundancies like this are used for emphasis ... if you just say nikavuna ... someone might miss that "-ka-" ... it's only one consonant away from ninavuna or nitavuna, but using "halafu" at the same time makes the "and then" sentiment very clear.
423
While redundancies aren't necessarily incorrect, conciseness isn't necessarily incorrect, either. In this case, omitting the "halafu" is marked as incorrect, but I think the question posed here is whether that would actually be linguistically incorrect.
'Harvest' is plain wrong here:
one is here gathering ('picking') SOME tomatoes subsequent to being at the farm ('nilienda shambani halafu') - just happens to be there;
'harvest' demands going to the farm for the purpose of undertaking the reaping of ALL tomatoes ('nilienda kukavuna,' or 'nilienda nikavune');
thus, here, not 'harvest,' but 'pick,' and the two don't mean the same thing, please.