Mama hutumia sufuria lenye kifuniko kupika samaki nyumbani.

Mother uses the pot with a lid to cook fish at home.

Breakdown of Mama hutumia sufuria lenye kifuniko kupika samaki nyumbani.

• kupika: to cook
• samaki: the fish
• mama: the mother
• kutumia: to use
• nyumbani: at home
• sufuria: the pot
• kifuniko: the lid
• lenye: that has

Questions & Answers about Mama hutumia sufuria lenye kifuniko kupika samaki nyumbani.

What does hutumia mean, and why is the prefix hu- used here?

hutumia is the present-habitual form of kutumia (“to use”). The prefix hu- marks an action that happens regularly or habitually. So Mama hutumia… means “Mother regularly uses…” If you wanted to say “Mother is using…” right now, you’d use the present-continuous prefix ana-, yielding Mama anatumia….

What role does lenye play in sufuria lenye kifuniko?

lenye is a relative adjective meaning “which has” or “with.” It agrees with the noun class of sufuria (class 5), combining the class-5 prefix li- with enye, hence lenye. Thus sufuria lenye kifuniko literally means “a pot which has a lid,” i.e. “a pot with a lid.”

Why is kupika in the infinitive form, and what is its function here?

Here kupika (“to cook”) is used as a purpose clause, explaining why the pot is used. sufuria lenye kifuniko kupika samaki = “a pot with a lid (in order) to cook fish.” The infinitive directly follows to express the pot’s intended use.

Can I use ili before kupika, and how would that change the sentence?

Yes. Adding ili (“in order to”) makes the purpose link explicit:
Mama hutumia sufuria lenye kifuniko ili kupika samaki nyumbani.
The meaning stays the same, but ili clearly signals “in order to cook.” In everyday Swahili ili is often dropped when purpose is obvious.

What is nyumbani, and why isn’t it katika nyumba?

nyumbani = nyumba (“house”) + locative suffix -ni, giving “at home.” It’s the common, idiomatic way to say “at home.” You can say katika nyumba (“in the house”), but nyumbani is more natural for “at home.”

I notice there’s no object marker on the verb. When are object markers used in Swahili?

Object markers only appear on verbs when the object is a pronoun. Full noun phrases like sufuria lenye kifuniko and samaki do not trigger an object marker. If you replace sufuria lenye kifuniko with “it,” you’d insert the class 5 object marker -li- into the verb:
Mama hu-li-tumia kupika samaki nyumbani.
Here hu-li-tumia = “she habitually uses it….”