Saturday, July 5, 2008

Possessions - Things

Ni sa bula!

In the Fijian language there are three broad categories of possession. They are:
  1. Things
  2. Food
  3. Drink
Today, we'll be looking at the first category for things. different suffixes are used depending upon the number of owners. For example:

Oqo na noqu vale.
This is my house.

Oqo na nomu vale.
This is your house.

Oqo na nona vale.
This is her house.
There are three important notes here:
  1. When referring to things, we use "no".
  2. The owner is identified by what is attached after "no":
  3. There is no gender inferred by possessives. So nona may be used for his, her, or its.
To identify a singular owner, we use one of the following:
noqumine
nomuyours
nonahis, hers, or its

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