Learn how to make plans
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| Hamjamboni. Mimi ni Medina. Hi everybody! I’m Medina. |
| Welcome to Swahilipod101.com's “Kiswahili kwa dakika tatu,” The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Swahili. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to talk about shillings. Can you still remember? |
| In this lesson, we’ll practice how to talk about your plans and ask others about theirs. For example, if a friend asks you: "What are you doing this weekend?" |
| Let’s get started! |
| If you want to know what your friend is planning to do on the weekend, you can ask- |
| Unampango gani wikendi? |
| [slowly] Unampango gani wikendi? |
| Let’s break it down. |
| Unampango is a declarative one-word statement that means "you have a plan". |
| In this word, u is the personal pronoun for “you”, na stands for “to have”, and mpango is “plan” |
| gani means “what.” It’s a question word that makes the declarative statement unampango a question. |
| Can you guess what wikendi means? The pronunciation of this word is a pretty big clue - if you guessed “weekend”, you’re right! |
| So altogether we have |
| Unampango gani wikendi? |
| It’s an easy and commonly used sentence, which is translated as “What are you going to do this weekend?” |
| What if you’re not asking about this weekend? |
| When you want to ask about another specific time, you just need to replace the word wikendi. |
| “Tomorrow” is kesho. So you can also say Unampango gani kesho? which is “What are you going to do tomorrow?” Or, you could also put in a weekday, such as Jumatatu, "on Monday" or Jumamosi, which is "on Saturday". |
| Ok, now you know how to ask the question. But how should you answer, when someone asks you? |
| Here’s one way - Nitaenda kwa sinema. This means "I will go to the movies." |
| Nitaenda means "I will go", kwa means “to”. sinema is the easy one - it means “movie theater.” |
| Now it’s time for Medina’s Insights. |
| You have probably noticed that Swahili does not use prepositions in the same way as English. Instead, the one-word sentence mostly summarizes what the preposition might intend to say. However, this is not always the case depending on how it’s used in a sentence. This might be a bit confusing at first, but with a little practice, you’ll get the hang of it. We will be mentioning examples over the next few lessons, so please keep them in mind! |
| In this lesson, you learned how to talk about your schedule. Next time, we’re going to learn how to use the verb kuwa which means "to be". Do you know how say your nationality in Swahili? |
| I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next Kiswahili kwa dakika tatu lesson. |
| Tuonane tena! |
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