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Swahili tongue twister
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PostPosted: Mon 22 Feb 2010 3:05 am 
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Joined:Thu 13 Aug 2009 6:43 pm
Posts:48
Going to see the Slovak tongue twisters you announced in your "What's new" page, I noticed you had one in Swahili...

...except that it not only doesn't mean what you have it translated as, but is just gibberish. What you have is:

Watu watu wa watu wawili watu.
Those people from the Watu region eat boiled rice.

This actually translates word for word as "People people of people(/Watu?) two(-people) people.
(Each "watu" except for the one meaning the place name translates simply as "people".

What you are probably looking for is this:

Watu wale wawili wa Watu wala wali.
people those two of Watu habitually-eat boiled-rice

or morpheme by morpheme:

wa(human class plural)-tu(person)
wa(human class plural)-le(distal demonstrative; 'that')
wa(human class plural)-wili(two)
wa(human class plural)-a(associative; 'of'/'from')
Watu(place name)
wa(human class plural)-[a(habitual tense prefix)]-l('eat')-a(general affirmative indicative verb ending)
wali(rice: likely via Malagasy vary, itself from Austronesian *paday probably through Malay padi)


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Re: Swahili tongue twister
PostPosted: Tue 23 Feb 2010 3:14 am 
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Joined:Sat 18 Apr 2009 5:25 am
Posts:198
kiwehtin wrote:
Going to see the Slovak tongue twisters you announced in your "What's new" page, I noticed you had one in Swahili...

...except that it not only doesn't mean what you have it translated as, but is just gibberish. What you have is:

Watu watu wa watu wawili watu.
Those people from the Watu region eat boiled rice.

This actually translates word for word as "People people of people(/Watu?) two(-people) people.
(Each "watu" except for the one meaning the place name translates simply as "people".

. . . .


People called the Romans they go the house?


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Re: Swahili tongue twister
PostPosted: Tue 23 Feb 2010 5:06 pm 
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Joined:Thu 16 Apr 2009 6:21 pm
Posts:26
Location: Bangor, Gwynedd, Cymru
Thanks for this.

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one language is never enough / 一種語言永遠不夠 / dydy un iaith byth yn ddigon


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