Learn how to ask "What?"
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| Hamjamboni. Welcome back 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 use the verb kuja. |
| Now, we will start our lesson series dedicated to question words in Swahili. The first one we will be taking a look at is probably the most common question, "What?" nini? For example we can say, Kuna nini? for “What's the matter?” |
| Kuna nini? |
| [Slowly] Kuna nini? |
| The first thing to remember about question |
| words is that they always come at the end the sentence. |
| How would you ask your friend what he is doing? Do you still remember the verb “to do” from the earlier lesson? |
| The question would be Unafanya nini? |
| [slowly] Unafanya nini? |
| Let’s break it down. |
| Unafanya is a one-word sentence that literally means “You are doing.” |
| Breaking it further we have |
| U which is a pronoun for “you.” |
| na indicates the tense; in this case, present tense. |
| fanya is a word we learned earlier, do you |
| remember that it means “to do?” |
| Together we have Unafanya nini? |
| “What are you doing?” |
| Also, if you want to ask about a specific object that you are not familiar with, you would ask Hii ni nini? for “What is this?” |
| For a very common question like “What time is it?”, We will say, Ni saa ngapi? |
| In English this translates to “What time is it? |
| Now you can make other questions like this using the word nini. |
| Like if you want to ask, “What are you watching?” in Swahili, that would be |
| Unatazama nini? |
| Earlier, we observed that if you want to ask your friend what he is watching, you would say, |
| Unatazama nini? |
| That would simply translate as “What are you watching?” |
| But if you want to ask more specifically, “Which programme is that?”, you would use gani? |
| Unatazama kipindi gani? |
| Nani is also used as a key question word when you meet someone new. |
| Jina lako ni nani? |
| “What is your name?” |
| Do you still remember how to answer this question? We learned all about it in lesson 1! |
| Now it’s time for Medina’s Insights. |
| In reference to our previous lessons, do you remember how to ask someone how they are doing in Swahili? You might have guessed Habari or Jambo, both of which can be used in casual as well as formal settings. However, you might hear Kenyans say, vipi? or mambo? These are a form of casual greeting similar to the English, “What’s up.” Usually, it invites a casual setting that allows you to get along with others really quickly. You should give it a try! |
| Now you know how to ask questions with the word for “what”. Don’t worry if you get confused about when to use nini, gani and when to use nani, because you’ll definitely be understood if you get it wrong, and eventually you’ll have no problems with it. |
| In the next lesson, we will talk about the interrogative word "where". |
| Do you know it already? I can promise it’s just as easy as "what!" |
| I’ll be waiting to tell you all about it in the next Kiswahili kwa dakika tatu, lesson. Kwaheri, tuonane tena. |
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