"My maternal grandmother and I."
Translation:Shi dóó shimasaní.
19 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Im just starting to learn this but i wonder if it is because shi is already attached to shimasani so shimasani would mean my grandmother. That might make the phrasing me and my grandmother
We are not just applying English grammar, we're trying to understand this grammar. Is there a rule for this in Navajo? The youngest person comes first, the speaker comes first? Does it not matter at all and we could have put our grandmother first?
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In other sentences, like "my grandfather and my uncle" it is marked wrong to change the order, but here it is necessary. I can only guess that it has something to do with "shi"? I would be happy if someone can tell me more about this. (Please don't tell me I'm applying English grammar to another language, I'm not even a native English speaker. How am i supposed to know that this case works different from other, similar sentences. The usual rule i have encountered in Duo is, that you don't change the order of an enumeration unless you have to. So don't be rude to people who are asking what is the rule/convention in Navajo here. It doesn't help anyone.)
What irks me is when I use all the right accent marks and it says to be sure to use the right accent marks, or when it offers another translation the same as mine but without the period at the end.
So I think what's giving many people trouble is a lack of explanation for why one particular word must be first in this conjunction. Even in English, the rule placing "I" in the second position is more of a demonstration of politeness than a hard and fast grammatical requirement; "I and my grandmother" is not ungrammatical, though it juxtaposes the speaker in precedence over their grandmother.
But no one is suggesting that Navajo must follow these rules! They want to know why the ordering in the answer is obligatory, if indeed it is, because it's somewhat jarring to have one order given in the English, when it doesn't have to be in that order, then to be told it should be in a different order in Navajo, without any explanation as to why.
They're also mindful that this course is very much in beta, and that this phrase could simply only have one possible answer to compare against. They just don't know enough Navajo to tell whether its obligatory, or just a limitation of the courseware. So if you're not responding with a good-faith explanation of how conjunctions work with pronouns in Navajo, or even reassuring commenters that they're right, and the courseware is just still limited by its novelty, then please consider pressing the cancel button there to the right of the post button.
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Looks like a bug in the dictionary hints for "I", showing not only "shi" and "shí," (presumably both correct?) but also "shimasaní"! Especially confusing for the absolute beginners just getting to this step for the first time, since this very step is introducing this word for "maternal grandmother"... (reported)
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When I mouse over "I," it shows "shimasaní" as a possible translation. Is that just because the word "shimasaní" belongs in that position in the Navajo translation?
In English, it's grammatically incorrect to say "Me and my grandma" , you're supposed to say "My grandma and I". In Navajo the sentence just flows better when it's "Shi doo shimasani". Since, "shi" can mean "I/me/my/mine", placing it at the beginning of the sentence when you're not referring to owning/describing anything reduces subject/pronoun ambiguity.
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If Wiktionary is a guide, DL is wrong to complain about accent marks for spelling it as Shí in the upper tone. In Wiktionary, only the shi- prefix (meaning "my") appears in the lower tone. At least one commenter actually claims Shí is required for the stand-alone pronoun, and that Shi- must be in the lower tone. I'd love to know if this is really a valid rule!
I faced the same problem which others are facing. There should be a solid reasoning for that.
