Things to Get Used to While Learning Fijian

Here are some genitives that you may never have come across before and may trip you up.

Containers vs contents

 Na bilo ni yaqona means the kava-bowl.

I came to think of that sentence as, “the bowl of kava” but it is not. The phrase: na bilo yaqona means the bowl of kava. It is good not to think of the word “ni” as meaning anything, but representing a dash.

Changing an adjective if the subject is pluralised

If you have a plural base and are describing that base as big (levu), short (lekaleka), or small (lailai) you have use the special forms of these: lelevu, leleka, lalai

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