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Lesson Transcript

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 about the negative form.
In this lesson, we will learn some Swahili adjectives and how to use them.
Basically, placing adjectives in a sentence works the same way as in English. Therefore, if you simply want to say “The car is red” it would be
Gari hilo ni nyekundu.
And saying “I have a red car” is
Nina gari nyekundu.
Now you’ve also learned the word for “red”, nyekundu.
Just like in English, Swahili has many different kinds of adjectives, but unlike in English, Swahili adjectives have to agree with the noun they're describing.
Let's take a look at the adjective kubwa. It literally means “big”. Its beginning has to be conjugated with a a prefix of the noun class depending on the noun being used. For example: Mtoto mkubwa. “Big baby.” Kitabu kikubwa. "Big book." Mti mkubwa. "A big tree."
Notice how often the adjective takes the same case as the noun it’s describing. The prefix ki in kikubwa “big” is derived from ki of the noun kitabu, “book.”
To learn more about the noun class and the way they are conjugated, get in touch with us in our Absolute Beginner lessons at Swahilipod101.com.
Lets look at the plural forms of the above examples:
Watoto wakubwa. “Big babies.
Vitabu vikubwa. "Big books." Miti mikubwa. "Big trees."
Uncountable nouns that exist only in the plural form have their adjectives fall in the JI-MA category: A better example to use is water. For “The dirty water has been poured” we would say, Maji machafu yamemwagwa.
Can you guess the adjective in this sentence?
Chafu is the adjective and it has MA at its beginning.
Now it’s time for Medina’s Insights.
Adjectives in Swahili go along with the nine different noun classes used in Swahili. The noun classes are necessary to give the adjectives harmony. In most cases the adjective takes the plural form of its noun class.
In this lesson, we learned how to formulate adjectives based on their noun classes.
Next time, we’ll learn the basic uses of the verb -kwenda, which means "to go”.
I’ll be waiting for you in the next Kiswahili kwa dakika tatu. Tuonane!

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