"This is the farm that we cultivated last year!"
Translation:Hili ndilo shamba tulililima mwaka uliopita!
6 Comments
Hili ni Shamba = This is the farm..... Hili ndilo shmabo = This is indeed the farm where....
The ndi- translates to the emphatic 'indeed' whilst the -lo is the locative word for 'where'. So basically, the ndilo is used to tell someone that 'this is indeed the location of the farm we cultivated.'
I don't think the -lo in 'ndilo' has a locatival function. It rather marks agreement with the JI/MA-class word 'shamba', just like 'hili' does: 'ndi-' (emphatic marker) + -lo (JI/MA-class agreement marker).
Perhaps the exclamation point is intended as a hint to use "ndilo". [??] My issue is with the "tulililima" -- I get that an "object" infix is being used for emphasis, but what about the relative construction? The "that" in this context implies a relative infix is probably needed. Hili ndilo shamba tulilolima mwaka uliopita. You could even have "tulilolilima" -- both relative and object infix.
This puzzles me as well. Perhaps the relative clause is a way in English to translate the emphatic value of ndi- (apart from using 'indeed', which is cumbersome).
