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Hawa marafiki wanacheza mpira.

Hawa marafiki wanacheza mpira.
These friends are playing ball.
FromLesson 8inHardcore Swahili
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Breakdown of Hawa marafiki wanacheza mpira.

rafiki
the friend
kucheza
to play
mpira
the ball
hawa
these
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Questions & Answers about Hawa marafiki wanacheza mpira.

What does Hawa mean in this sentence and why is it used here?
Hawa is a demonstrative pronoun used for plural human nouns. In this context, it means “these”, indicating a specific group—in this case, a group of friends.
How does the noun marafiki function, and what does it mean?
Marafiki means “friends” and is inherently plural in Swahili. When paired with Hawa, it emphasizes that the sentence is referring to “these friends.”
How is the verb wanacheza constructed, and what do its parts indicate about the subject and tense?

The verb wanacheza breaks down into three parts: • Wana- is the subject concord, indicating a third person plural subject (“they”). • -na- is a present tense marker, which can express either a continuous or habitual action. • Cheza is the verb root meaning “play.”
Together, they convey that “they are playing” or simply “they play.”

What does mpira mean, and why is there no article before it?
Mpira translates to “ball” in English. In Swahili, nouns typically do not require articles such as “a” or “the,” so the noun appears without one.
How does the word order in this sentence compare to English sentence structure?

Swahili generally follows a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) order, just like English. In this sentence: • Hawa marafiki is the subject, • wanacheza is the verb, and • mpira is the object.
This similarity in structure can help English speakers understand the basic sentence construction in Swahili.