Swahili is a Bantu language which is native to or mainly spoken in the East African region. It has a grammatical structure that is typical of Bantu languages, bearing all the hallmarks of this language family. These include agglutination, a rich array of noun classes, extensive inflection for person (both subject and object), tense, aspect and mood, and generally a subject–verb–object (SVO) word order.
Typology Swahili may be described in several ways depending on the aspect being considered. It is an agglutinative language. It constructs whole words by joining together discrete roots and morphemes with specific meanings, and may also modify words by similar processes. Its basic word order is SVO. However, because the verb is inflected to indicate the subject and sometimes also the object, this order may be changed to emphasise certain parts of the sentence. It does not mark nouns for case. Nominal roles are indicated by a combination of word order and agreement markers on the verb, with no change to the nouns themselves. It has a complex grammatical gender system, but as this does not include a distinction based on natural sex, the term "noun class" is generally used instead of "gender". It has head-first order with few exceptions. It is a pro-drop language. Verbs may be used without explicitly specifying the subject or the object with substantives (nouns or pronouns).
Nouns Noun classes Swahili nouns are grouped into noun classes based on the prefix they have, with each class having a prescribed number. For example, the nouns "girls" and "overseers" belong to class 2, characterised by the prefix wa-, whereas "lid, cover" and "diabetes" belong to class 7, characterised by the prefix ki-. The classes 5, 9 and 10 are frequently without any prefix, such as a class-6 noun meaning "car" and , meaning "bottle" in class 9 and "bottles" in class 10. The numbers are based on the classes reconstructed for Proto-Bantu, and have corresponding classes in the other Bantu languages which can be identified by the same system of numbers. Therefore, classes that are missing in Swahili create a gap in the numbering, as is the case with classes above 18 as well as classes 12 and 13, which are absent in standard Swahili (although do frequently occur in non-standard varieties). Tables in this article are labelled not only with the traditional numbering system for Bantu languages but also a simple label based on noun morphology in order to make the tables more accessible to learners, who are generally taught labels for classes such as "ki/vi" instead of "7/8".
When discussing Swahili noun classes, it is important to distinguish between (1) morphological noun classes as a quality of the noun themselves indicated by morphological features (generally prefixes), and (2) syntactic noun classes as an agreement (i.e. concord) paradigm affecting the use of other words in the sentence. Here, "noun class" is used with the former meaning. Morphological and syntactic noun classes often diverge, especially when it comes to nouns referring to people and animals which do not belong to the morphological noun class 1/2, signalled by m-wa. For more information, see concord.
The following noun classes exist:
Class Prefix before... Example Typical meaning consonant vowel 1 m- m- mw- "person" Humans, animate / Singular 2 wa- wa- w(a)- "people" Humans, animate / Plural 3 m- m- mw- "tree" Plants, inanimate / Singular 4 mi- mi- my- "trees" Plants, inanimate / Plural 5 ji- (ji-) (j-) "eye" Various / Singular 6 ma- ma- ma- "eyes" Various / Plural 7 ki- ki- ch-/ki- "book" Various, diminutives, manner/way/language / Singular 8 vi- vi- vy-/vi- "books" Various, diminutives, manner/way/language / Plural 9 N- n- ny- "lion" Animals, inanimate / Singular 10 N- n- ny- "lions", "keys" Animals, inanimate / Plural 11 u- u- u-/uw-/w- "key" Things with an extended outline shape 14 u- u- u-/uw-/w- "humanity" Abstract nouns 15 ku- ku- ku-/kw- "eating, consuming" Infinitives 16 -ni/pa- - - "place" Locatives (proximal, exact) 17 -ni/ku- Locatives (distal, approximate) 18 -ni/m- Locatives (interior)
Every class up to 11 can be regarded as inherently singular or plural. Odd-numbered classes are singular, even-numbered classes are plural. The plural of a noun is normally formed by switching it to the next higher class. Thus, the plural of class 1 "person" is class 2 "people". For class 11 nouns, the plural is in class 10. Class 14 usually has no plural at all, but in rare instances class 6 is used to form a plural for these nouns, for example "sickness, disease", "diseases". Class 6 also contains a lot of nouns for liquids, such as "water", and other nouns derived from verbs such as "conversation(s)". Aside from these, there are some nouns in other classes that do not change class to indicate number, such as "afternoon(s)", "daytime" (class 3), "war(s)" (class 8), "night(s)" (class 14), and these can be shown as singular or plural only by surrounding context.
In terms of meaning, groups of similar nouns tend to belong to similar noun classes. For example, nouns for people, including agent nouns, are commonly in classes 1/2, while animals are often in classes 9/10. Nouns describing plants are in class 3/4 and any fruit they produce will probably be in class 5/6. Abstract nouns are often in class 14, loanwords in classes 9/10 and 5/6. Many nouns for liquids are in class 6. Infinitives/gerunds of verbs are in class 15. Diminutives as well as the words for many man-made tools and languages are in class 7/8. These are only generalisations and there are exceptions in most classes.
Concord The class of the noun determines the forms of other parts of speech that relate to it, such as verbs, adjectives, etc. This process is called agreement or concord. These other parts of speech receive their own concordant prefixes (termed "concords" for short), generally matching in class with the noun, though the prefixes themselves are not always the same. In the examples below, the left and right sides of the table show sentences with a singular and then plural subject respectively.
+ Class 1/2: ↔
+ Class 7/8: ↔
+ Class 11/10: ↔
Animate nouns (i.e. those referring to people or animals) which are not in classes 1/2 generally take the agreement prefixes (concords) from classes 1/2 as if they did belong to it.
+ Class 7/8 Animate: ↔
Animacy agreements can often distinguish different meanings of the same noun, such as ndege, which means "bird(s)" when animate and "aeroplane(s)" when inanimate.
+ Class 9/10 Animate: ↔
+ Class 9/10 Inanimate: ↔
Animate nouns in classes 9/10 may exhibit a slight aberration from this pattern. The genitive pronominal forms -angu, -ako, -ake, -etu, -enu and -ao are frequently inflected with a group of nouns referring to close human relationships with their appropriate class 9/10 concords, regardless of the fact that they are animate (giving yangu, yako, yetu etc. in singular and zangu, zako, zetu etc. in plural). For some speakers, the same rule applies to the simple genitive preposition -a (giving ya in singular and za in plural), however for most speakers wa is used for all animate nouns regardless of number or class. Other parts of speech are unaffected by this exception.
+ Class 9/10 Animate: ↔ Note: The phrase , literally "big mother", refers to the elder sister of one's mother.
+ Class 9/10 Animate: ↔ Nouns which follow this pattern of agreement include mama "mother(s)", baba "father(s)", ndugu "sibling(s)/relative(s)", kaka "(elder) brother(s)", dada "(elder) sister(s)", nyanya "grandmother(s)", bibi "grandmother(s)", babu "grandfather(s)", shangazi "paternal aunt(s)", shemeji "sister(s)/brother(s)-in-law", wifi "sister(s)-in-law", jamaa "relative(s)", rafiki "friend(s)", shoga "female friend of a woman", jirani "neighbour" and adui "enemy".
Nouns of this group, such as rafiki "friend", may optionally take a plural prefix ma- as though belonging to class 5/6, although their concords remain the same mix of class 1/2 and 9/10.
+ Class 9/10 Animate: ↔
In addition, animals of classes 9/10 generally take class 1 agreement throughout the singular, but may take 10 agreement on pronominal genitive words in the plural.
+ Class 9/10 Animate: ↔
+ Class 9/10 Animate: ↔
Another departure from the rule of animate nouns taking concords in classes 1/2 occurs on occasion with diminutives and augmentatives, whereby using concords of the class the noun belongs to (5/6 for augmentatives, 7/8 for diminutives) emphasises the diminution or augmentation.
Class 1 (neutral):Class 7 (diminutive): ↔
Locative classes
A locative noun is a derived noun that indicates a location associated with the base noun from which it is derived. The change in meaning can translate to a variety of English prepositions indicating location, such as "in", "at", "on", "to" or "from", and is thus quite general in meaning, with the exact meaning of the phrase generally being determined by the verb.
The Arabic loan noun mahali "place" (and its variations: pahali, mahala and pahala) is the only noun which inherently belongs to the locative class. Other nouns can be made locative by adding the suffix -ni to the end, although this is not available for proper nouns referring to places, any animate nouns, recent loanwords and some other arbitrary nouns.
Because locative nouns constitute three classes of their own, they cannot take the usual concords of the noun they have been derived from. The concords themselves show in which one of the locative classes the noun is being used. Class 16 is marked by concords based on pa- and indicates specific location. Class 17, with concords based on ku- indicates a more general location. Class 18 has concords based on mu- and indicates internal location.
nyumba ya Rehema "Rehema's house" (class 9) nyumbani kwa Rehema "at/to/from Rehema's house" (class 17) chumba cha Daudi "Daudi's room" (class 7) chumbani mwa Daudi "in/into/out of Daudi's room" (class 18)
Apposition and compounding The equivalent of compound words is usually formed using the genitive construction such as mpira wa kikapu "basketball" (literally "ball of basket"). This is similar to the compounding process found in many languages such as French fin de semaine "weekend" (literally "end of week").
There are also many compounds which do not use the genitive preposition -a. In these cases, two (or more) nouns are simply placed side by side. This is the case of skilled workpersons such as fundi viatu (shoemaker), fundi baskeli (bicycle mechanics) and so on.
The word order is the reverse of most compounds in English, with the head always preceding the modifiers in Swahili; in other words, the first noun describes what it is, and any subsequent noun narrows or specifies that description. For example, the class 9/10 noun punda "donkey(s)" is followed by the class 4 noun milia "stripes" to mean "zebra". Whereas in English, a hypothetical equivalent compound would place the noun for the stripes first and also require the singular: "stripe-donkey", the word for "donkey" appears first in Swahili.
There is a good deal of variation among different authors as to whether the nouns are written together, hyphenated or separated and thus the word for "zebra(s)" may appear as any of pundamilia, punda-milia or punda milia.
A few common compound words have irregular plural forms because number marking occurs on both elements. The word mwanamke "woman" becomes wanawake "women" in plural. Similarly, mwanamume "man" becomes wanaume "men" in plural, although the singular form mwanaume is also common. These two nouns are formed from the word mwana "son, daughter", which is commonly used in compounds to essentially mean "person", followed by the words mke "wife" (plural: wake) and mume "husband" (plural: waume) respectively.
Pronouns