I gave him phone credit for free, but he still didn’t call me. in Tetun
Ha'u fó nia pulsa saugati, maibé nia nafatin la telefone ha'u.
English → Tetun phrasebook
Grammar in this phrase
Possession
nia / nian — possession
nia'nia' goes BEFORE the thing possessed; 'nian' goes AFTER. Both function the same way; position decides which form. 'nia' is also the 3rd-person pronoun (he / she / it) — disambiguate by position.
Negation
la — 'not' (general negation)
laPlaced before verbs and adjectives to negate them. For contrastive 'not X but Y' use 'laós'; for 'not yet' use 'seidauk'; for 'no longer' wrap 'la ... ona' around the verb.
More patterns like these in the Tetun grammar guide.
Translate your own text with the free English ↔ Tetun translator or look up individual words in the Tetun dictionary.
Related phrases
- Ha'u fó $1, nia volta fali 50c.I gave (him) a dollar, and he gave me fifty cents change.
- Ha'u koir hela pulsa atu enxe ba telefone, para telefone ba ferik lai.I scrape off the phone recharge card to top up my phone, so I can call my mother.
- Ema ne'e sempre halo sala, maibé ha'u hadomi nafatin nia.This person always does wrong, but I still keep loving him.
- Nia aman la fó osan nia ne'e mak nia tanis halo bulak rai tiha de'it ne'e.When his father didn't give him money he just cried intensely.
- Ita haree labarik barak fa'an pulsa iha estrada ibun.We see lots of children selling phone credit cards by the side of the road.
- Ha'u haree João hariis la moos, sabaun furin sei iha nia tilun laran.I can see that João didn’t bathe properly, there are still soap suds in his ears.