Oshikwanyama/Omafiku nomafimbo

Chapter 9

Omafiku nomafimbo
OMUKWANYAMA TA TI:

~ Omunwe umwe ihau litombola na.

~ One finger cannot catch a louse. (Sometimes you need help.)

Grammar Corner:

Days of the Week In Oshikwanyama, the words to describe a particular day of the week – this Friday, last Tuesday, next week – are, as you might have guessed, dependent on noun classes. To say “last week”, you say “the week that went by”: oshivike sha dja ko. In this example, sha is the past subject concord for oshi- words, without the o-.To say “next week”, you say “the week that is coming”: oshivike tashi (u)ya. Like the last example, tashi is just the present subject concord without the o-. To say “This week”, you say, well, “this week”: oshivike eshi. Eshi is the “this” word for the oshiclass of nouns.Because you might not have everything in your head quite yet, we’ve collected all of this information in the following table. None of this information is new; it has only been gathered here for convenience.

*Even though the prefix of omwedi is omu-, its plural is eemwedi.

Exercise 1
Translate the following statements into Oshikwanyama:


 * 1) Next Sunday we will go to Oshakati.
 * 2) Last Thursday Natanael went to the hospital.
 * 3) This Friday I will go to town to buy food and see friends.
 * 4) They will go to Etosha next week.
 * 5) We went to Windhoek last Saturday.

Exercise 2
Translate the following statements from Oshikwanyama to English:


 * 1) Oshivike sha dja ko, onda li handi vele medimo.
 * 2) Ondi na edalo omwedi tau uya.
 * 3) Etine tali uya, ohandi i kodolopa.
 * 4) Molomakaya la dja ko, omumati wange okwa dana etanga.
 * 5) Itandi i kongeleka mosoondaxa eshi.

Grammar Corner: Telling Time 

In chapter six, we learned how to count in Oshikwanyama. To tell time, we just need to add some phrases like “thirty minutes past”.

To tell the hour, just say the number with an o- in front of it, e.g. Ombali means "It's two o'clock".

The easiest way to tell time with minutes is to state the hour first, followed by “past”, then the minutes. 8:30 is hetatu ya pita omilongo nhatu, and 6:15 is said hamano ya pita omulongo nanhano. Here, ya pita means “past”.

Oshikwanyama always adds a bit of spice to keep things interesting, of course. To say “past” for the hours nine to twelve, it is no longer ya pita but wa pita. So 9:20 becomes omuwoi wa pita omilongo mbali, and 12:45 is omulongo nambali wa pita omilongo nhee nanhano. This is because the numbers nine through twelve all start with omu-, and the subject agrees with the verb by using the correct subject concord.

A second way to tell time is to say 8:30 as “half till nine”, etata lomuwoi. Broken into pieces, this is etata lo-omugoyi, but the first o is elided. Likewise, 10:30 is said etata lomulongo na imwe.

The same things happens with other times: 1:30 becomes etata lombali (etata lombali) and 5:30 is said as etata lohamano.

Exercise 3
Look at Jane’s program for the day below, and say what she did during the day and what time she did those activities, in Oshikwanyama.

5:30- woke up

5:45- bathed

6:30- ate breakfast with her family

7:15- walked to school

13:00- ate lunch

16:00- went to the cuca shop to have a beer with her friend Simon

20:30- ate dinner with her family- they ate oshifima and goat meat

21:30- went to bed

Exercise 4
Create a program about your typical day, starting with the time you wake up until the time that you go to bed, in Oshikwanyama.

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Exercise 5
Below is the diary of Meme Hileni for the month of December. Translate her agenda into Oshikwanyama. Include what she is going to do, stating the days, and the time she will do those activities. Read it out loud, to practice telling time.

CULTURAL INFORMATION

There are various national holidays in Namibia- they are listed below in a table, along with the Oshikwanyama translation of the holiday. Below the table are some common holiday phrases.