Language/Swahili-individual-language/Grammar/Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

The Swahili personal pronouns are as below:

	SWAHILI	ENGLISH
1st Person Singular	Mimi	I
2nd Person Singular	Wewe	You
3rd Person Singular	Yeye (for both male and female)	He or She
1st Person Plural	Sisi	We
2nd Person Plural	Nyinyi	You (plural)
3rd Person Plural	Wao	They

Possessive Pronouns

In Swahili, the possessive pronouns must agree with the noun class they represent. The nouns in Swahili are classified in groups called "ngeli". An example of one classification (ngeli) is Ngeli ya Ki - Vi(Ch-Vy) where you will find nouns such as:

• Kisu (knife singular) - Visu (plural)
• Kiti (chair) - Viti
• Kitabu (book) - Vitabu
• Chumba (room) - Vyumba

Let's first list the Swahili possessive pronouns before continuing with our example above.

	SWAHILI	ENGLISH
1st Person Singular	-angu	mine
2nd Person Singular	-ako	yours
3rd Person Singular	-ake	his or hers
1st Person Plural	-etu	ours
2nd Person Plural	-enu	yours (plural)
3rd Person Plural	-ao	theirs

Now, let me explain what i meant by "In Swahili, the possessive pronouns must agree with the noun class they represent". In the above example, we looked at Ngeli ya Ki-Vi(Ch-Vy) and we saw that the word knife-kisu falls in this category or ngeli. So, how do we say "My knife" in Swahili?

*Kisu -angu? No, we would have to place a prefix before the stem -angu. Since knife falls under the category of ngeli ya Ki-Vi(Ch-Vy) then it means:

• We must use the prefix ch for singular and vy for plural i.e. kisu changu - visu vyangu, chumba changu - vyumba vyangu

However, the prefixes placed before the stems when dealing with possessive pronouns change depending on the category(ngeli) of the noun given.