харбуза: melon
Мо аз бозор се дона харбуза харидем.
We bought three melons from the bazaar.
Мо аз сабзавот, мева, харбузаю тарбуз ҳеҷ камӣ надоштем.
We had no shortage of vegetables, fruit, melons and watermelons.
We bought three melons from the bazaar.
Мо аз сабзавот, мева, харбузаю тарбуз ҳеҷ камӣ надоштем.
We had no shortage of vegetables, fruit, melons and watermelons.
Bonus:
Because the word харбуза ends in a vowel, you can’t just put у on it for “and”. You either have to say “харбузаю тарбуз” or “харбузаву тарбуз”. Both ways are used.
There is a good article about харбуза and all its uses here: Tiroz website – харбуза
Need to practice your fruit and nuts vocab? You can do it at Memrise: Tajik Fruit and Nuts.
Why is there “се _дона_ харбуза” ? I found that “дона” means seed or grain, does it mean whole melon too? Or maybe it’s an idiom?
Дона does indeed mean seed or piece of grain, but it is also used as a counting word. There are several of these in Tajik – дона, сар, нафар, даста and others. Some of them are more easily translated into English, for example –
даста: a bunch
панҷ даста гул: five bunches of flowers.
Сар is used for counting animals, for example –
бист сар шутур: 2o camels, 20 head of camel
Нафар is used to count people –
дувоздаҳ нафар коргар: 12 workers (нафар is harder to translate here)
Дона is used for objects that can be counted, like bread, flowers, fruit etc. –
панҷ дона тухм: five eggs (дона is hard to translate here)
як дона гул: one flower
Дона can also be used with tears or drops of water –
донаҳои ашқ: teardrops
донаҳои борон: raindrops
донаҳои шабнам: drops of dew
These number words are not always used. Very often the suffix -то or -та is used instead.
даҳта асп: ten horses
панҷта дафтар: five notebooks
Thank you so much for your answer! Now I’ve got it! 🙂