Learn how to ask "When?"
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| Hamjamboni. Welcome again 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 ask the question "Where" in Swahili. |
| This time, we’re going to make questions with the interrogative word "When?", lini?. |
| Let’s go! |
| So let’s imagine your friend is planning to visit your place. And you would like to know when he or she is coming. You would ask the person Lini unakuja? |
| [slowly] Lini unakuja? |
| Let’s break the question down. |
| First we had- |
| Lini, which is the question word "When" in Swahili. |
| unakuja means “you are coming". |
| U is the pronoun of you. Na indicates “when” which means the time the action is going to take place. |
| Kuja literally means “to come” but in this case it implies to come and visit. |
| So, altogether it’s Lini unakuja? |
| "When will you come and visit?" |
| So the basic translation for “When” would be lini in Swahili. Like if you want to ask "When were you born?" it would be Lini ulizaliwa? |
| The word lini can be placed either at the beginning or at the end of the sentence. |
| There are also more specific ways to ask the question “When”. Just like in English, lini can be quite a vague question. |
| If you want to know something more precisely, you could ask saa ngani? which would be translated as “At what time?” |
| For example, if you want to know at what time the train is leaving, you would ask |
| Treni inaondoka saa ngapi? |
| [slowly] Treni inaondoka saa ngapi? |
| Lets break this sentence down: |
| First we have Treni which is the Swahili word for “train”, |
| The word that follows is inaondoka which is a one-word sentence that can be broken down like this: |
| i is the pronoun for treni, |
| na as you may remember represents the tense, in this case “when.” |
| The last word ondoka means “to leave”. |
| Altogether we have, |
| Treni inaondoka saa ngapi? |
| [slowly]: Treni inaondoka saa ngapi? |
| Another word with the same meaning as saa ngapi? would be wakati gani? It also indicates “time” or “period”. So you can think of it as meaning “what period of time”. Do you still remember the word je that we learned in the last lesson as a word that indicates a question? It can often be added, so it turns out to be Je, wakati gani? |
| So let’s say you are going to a concert, but you’re not sure what time it starts. To find out, you would ask |
| Je, tafrija unaanza wakati gani? “At what time is the concert starting?” |
| If you want to ask a question about duration such as "How long have you been in Kenya?" you would say Je, umekuwa Kenya kwa wakati gani? |
| So the expression “For how long” would be wakati gani or muda upi, which means the same thing. |
| Now let’s say you want to meet a friend. How would you ask "When will we meet?" in Swahili? You can actually use any of the question words lini, wakati gani, or muda upi to start with. For example, Je, tunakutana wakati gani? |
| You start off with the question word je, and then tunakutana, which when broken down we have tu meaning “we”; na stands for “when”, that is tense. |
| Here’s a new verb, kutana, “to meet”. When conjugated with tu, it becomes tunakutana. |
| Together we have, Je, tunakutana wakati gani? “When will we meet?” |
| If you want to be specific about the year, month, or weekday, the question is a little different. |
| “What year” would be mwaka gani? |
| For example the question “What year did you graduate?”, in Swahili would be |
| Ulihitimu mwaka gani? |
| Or if you want to know about the month, it would be Ulihitimu mwezi upi? |
| Like in the sentence “Which month were you born in?” |
| Ulizaliwa mwezi upi? |
| If you want to ask a friend on which day she is free, you would use the expression Unanafasi siku gani? |
| Unanafasi siku gani? |
| Now it’s time for Medina’s Insights. |
| As you can see from our lesson, the word lini is an important one to know; however, you should be careful when using it especially when asking when someone was born. Many Kenyans don’t like to disclose their age unless it is in very official scenarios such as job interviews, or during medical appointments. |
| So now we have learned how to correctly use the interrogative words for "When!” |
| In the next lesson, we’ll learn more about asking questions using "Who" in Swahili. |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Kiswahili kwa dakika tatu lesson. |
| Kwaheri, tuonane tena! |
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