User talk:Mjanja

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Again, welcome! —Internoob (Disc•Cont) 01:48, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

-a

I notice that a lot of your Swahili translations start with "-a". Is that really how it should be? For example, should we really have an entry for -a kidesturi rather than for kidesturi?

Also — I reverted your edit to [[supernatural]], because I'm confident that we should not have an entry for -si- -a dunia hii (ex: isiyo ya dunia hii).

—Ruakh_TALK 21:17, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

• In Swahili dictionary format, you only find adjectives without their prefix. That is why, it is written as -a kidesturi, because the adjective could be written as: wa kidesturi, ya kidesturi, la kidesturi, cha kidesturi, vya kidesturi, za kidesturi, etc. And you are right that there should not really be an entry under the name "-a kidesturi", but as a translation of "traditional", the appropriate dictionary form is "-a kidesturi". However, we cannot just write the translation as "kidesturi", because the reader could get confused and mistake it for an invariable adjective (an adjective that does not modify according to class or number).
  
  Also, there is no exact word for "supernatural" in Swahili, so, we translate it as "not of this world". So, like -a kidesturi, the forms could be: asiye wa dunia hii, wasio wa dunia hii, yasiyo ya dunia hii, kisicho cha dunia hii, visivyo vya dunia hii, lisilo la dunia hii, isiyo ya dunia hii, zisizo za dunia hii, etc.
  
  So, just remove links to those words, or add a redirect, but the translation should be kept in dictionary form, while the headword "kidesturi" would have its own entry. Mjanja (talk) 21:54, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

• Re: "-a kidesturi": So, you're saying that we should display "-a kidesturi", but link to [[kidesturi]]. Right? To do that, you need to click the "more" link to the right of "Preview translation", and put "kidesturi" in the box labeled "Page name".
  Re: "supernatural": O.K., I think I see. I've tagged it with {{attention|sw}}, to hopefully attract the attention of an editor with more experience editing Swahili here. Then we can see how they handle it. :-)
  —Ruakh_TALK 22:22, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

• The translations should display "-a kidesturi", but the link could go to "kidesturi". All dictionaries are written this way. And, I think you misunderstood. A page for the Swahili translation of "supernatural" is really not necessary, since it is self-explanatory.Mjanja (talk) 22:31, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

• Re: "The translations should display '-a kidesturi', but the link could go to 'kidesturi'": Yes, as I said. Did you understand my instructions?
  Re: "A page for the Swahili translation of 'supernatural' is really not necessary": O.K., but that doesn't mean it doesn't need formatting. :-)
  —Ruakh_TALK 23:00, 8 October 2012 (UTC)