Language/Swahili-individual-language/Grammar/Questions

swali / maswali - questions in Swahili

Hi Swahili Learners! 😃

➡ In today's lesson we will learn how to ask QUESTIONS in Swahili.

Happy learning!

---

Interrogative words are usually placed at the end of a sentence in Swahili (with the exception of "kwa nini" (why) which is always placed at the beginning of a sentence).

swahili	English	Examples
Nani ? Yupi ?	Who?	Jina langu nor Amina. My name is Amina. Jina lako ni nani? What is your name? (literally "who is your name"?)
Vipi?	How?	Vipi hali? How are you (literally "how is your condition"?) Nzuri sana. Very well.
-je ?	How?	Unlike the other question words, ‘je’ is used as an affix of a verb, for example: Unasemaje? How do you say it? (people often say this if they didn’t hear you, in the sense of ‘what did you say?) Unajuaje? How do you know? Because the stress is (almost) always on the penultimate syllable of a word, this means that unajua becomes unajuaje, with the stress on the ‘a’ rather than the ‘u’.
Gani?	What type of?	Unafanya kazi gani? What kind of work are you doing? Mimi ni mwalimu. I am a teacher.
Nini ?	What?	Ninafanya kazi. I'm working. Unafanya nini? What are you doing?
Ipi ?	Which?
Ngapi ? Kiasi gani ?	How many? How much?	Ni shillingi ngapi? How much is it?  (literally ‘how many shillings is it?’) Shillingi elfu tano.  5000 shillings. Ngapi is the only question word which changes form to agree with the class of the noun it describes. So you would ask ‘watoto wangapi?’ (how many children) or ‘miaka mingapi?’ (how many years). Don’t worry about this for now, and just use ‘ngapi’ until you learn the correct form with each noun class.
Ni bei gani ? Ni bure	What is the price? It's free
Wapi ?	Where?	Unatoka wapi? Where do you come from? Ninatoka Uganda. I am from Uganda.
Lini ?	When?
Kwa nini ? Mbona ?	Why?	Kwa nini unasoma Kiswahili? Why are you learning Swahili? Kwa sababu ninataka kuishi Tanzania. Because I want to live in Tanzania.
Kwa sababu ...	Because ...
jibu / majibu	the answer(s)