"The chairs of the house"

Translation: Viti vya nyumbani

[spencervds]

The use of the locative "ni" here is confusing to me. Would somebody please explain why it's needed for this phrase? Asante!

[Kalle63864]

Nyumba ni jengo na nyumbani ni mahali (Cf. Kamusi ya Kiswahili Sanifu svv. nyumba and nyumbani). So whereas nyumba is a concrete object nyumbani is abstract. This has grammatical consequences.

[Jurekkolas]

I am almost certain that nyumbani is incorrect here. And even if it might be accepted, it would be a poor Swahili

[NotaFakena1]

Doesn't nyumbani mean "to the house"?

[AhmedBossm]

Nyumba means house.
When you are saying 'at the house/in the house/of the house...etc' ,nyumba takes on the locative case which adds 'ni' to the end of it turning it into 'nyumbani'.
Same thing for other places for example 'mkutano-meeting'.
Ninaenda mkutanoni - im going to a meeting. See how it gained 'ni' at the end.

[Naishorua1]

I though nyumba was house and nyumbani home

[Katetx2001]

I thought nyumbani was IN the house, and cha/ya/etc was OF the house

[Inyara4]

This is exactly what i thought. Nyumba - house, nyumbani - home, to the house.
Looks like it's not like that. So, when exactly is "nyumba" standing all by itself? Only in frases like "The house is big"?

[Naishorua1]

I thought nyumba was house rather than nyumbani - home.

[deactivated user]

"The chairs of the house" is grammatically correct English, but I suspect you will (almost) never hear an native speaker of English use the phrase. I googled it and the meaning that came back was "wenyekiti wa baraza la wawakilishi" -- totally different meaning from what is intended here. If I saw the phrase "viti vya nyumbani" standing alone I would probably translate it as "house chairs", like "viti vya darasani" (classroom chairs), "viti vya ofisini" (office chairs), maybe "viti vya shule[ni]" (school chairs).

[MarxDagger]

"Wenyekiti wa baraza la wawakilishi" translates to "the chairmen of the council of representatives". Wenyekiti is the plural of "mwenyekiti" which means chairman. "Baraza" means council. Wawakilishi is the plural of "mwakilishi", which means representative. I typed "the chairs of the house" into Google Translate and I got "viti vya numba". I have no idea how dismonds got such a translation.

[AnthonyFol8]

Google English to Swahili Translator: "The chairs of the house." = "Viti vya nyumba";
"The chairs of the home."= "Viti vya nyumbani."

[Matthias720438]

Nyumbani is wrong, I think, as it is the locative. The answer viti vya nyumba should be correct.

[deactivated user]

I did searches on ya/za nyumbani on Google and various other sites to convince myself that viti vya nyumbani is indeed a valid Swahili construction and means something like "home chairs" or "house chairs". Here are some examples I found from glosbe.com (not a totally reliable source but can be helpful), searching for za nyumbani:

kazi za nyumbani - (home) chores, housework

habari za nyumbani - greeting "How's your family" (lit. "news of home")

gharama za nyumbani - household expenses

mechi za nyumbani - home games (or matches)

takataka za nyumbani - domestic waste

https://glosbe.com/sw/en/za%20nyumbani

EDIT: You may also find -a kinyumbani meaning something like "of the home type", "like back home", so some examples would be nguo za kinyumbani, muziki wa kinyumbani, chakula cha kinyumbani.