Dialogue

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Vocabulary

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Lesson Notes

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
In the last few lessons, we introduced you to some phrases you can use when you’re in Kenya. This will be the last lesson of the series dedicated to learning from the people around you.
BODY
In this lesson, we are going to cover “How do you read this?”
In Swahili, “How do you read this?” is
Unasomaje hii?
Let’s break it down:
(slow) Unasomaje hii?
Once more:
Unasomaje hii?
The first word, Unasomaje, is a single-word sentence that means “how do you read.”
We can break it down like this:
una stands for the subject, in this case the person.
soma means “read”
je creates the question. In this case it implies “how?”
Together, it becomes,
(slow) Unasomaje
Unasomaje
The last word, hii means, “this”
The entire sentence again is:
(slow) Unasomaje hii?
Unasomaje hii?
If you are pointing at something—probably a book, a newspaper, or simply a street sign—you might also like to ask, “How do you pronounce this?”
Unatamkaje hii?
The sentence construction is exactly the same with the above, except that we have replaced soma with tamka, which is a word for “pronounce.”
Let’s break that question down:
(slow) Unatamkaje hii?
Once more:
Unatamkaje hii?
The other alternative would be to ask “How do you say it?”
Unakisemaje?
(slow) Unakisemaje?
Unakisemaje?
The sentence construction is still the same. Just replace the tamka with sema, meaning “say”.
After you have learned the reading and the pronunciation, you will probably want to know the meaning. So why don’t you try to ask,
Inamaanisha nini?
“What does it mean?”
Let’s break it down:
Inamaanisha is a way of saying “it means”
(slow) Inamaanisha
Inamaanisha
The word nini means “what”
nini
(slow) ni-ni
nini
Together we have;
(slow) Inamaanisha nini?
Once again:
Inamaanisha nini?
This sentence can be literally read as “its meaning is what?”

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