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Questions & Answers about Leo jioni tutaenda sinema.
What does Leo jioni mean exactly?
- Leo means today.
- jioni means evening (the early part of the night).
Together, Leo jioni literally reads “today evening”, but idiomatically it’s “this evening” or “tonight.”
Why is Leo jioni at the beginning of the sentence?
Swahili usually places time expressions (like leo, jana, kesho, or leo jioni) before the verb phrase to set the temporal context first. So you introduce when something happens, then you say what happens and who does it.
What’s the difference between jioni, usiku, and mchana?
- mchana = daytime/afternoon
- jioni = evening (roughly from late afternoon to early night)
- usiku = night (from after dusk to before dawn)
Use the one that matches the part of the day you mean.
How is the verb tutaenda formed? Why tu-ta-enda?
Swahili verbs are built from:
1) a subject marker (we = tu-)
2) a tense/aspect marker (future = -ta-)
3) the verb root (enda = “go”)
So tu-ta-enda = “we” + “future” + “go” → we will go.
Why is it tutaenda and not tutakuenda?
- ku- is the infinitive prefix (to go = kuenda).
- When you add subject/tense markers, you drop that ku- and attach your markers directly to the root.
Hence: tu-ta-enda, not tu-ta-ku-enda.
Why is there no word for “to” before sinema?
After a directional verb like kwenda (“to go”), Swahili takes its destination directly as an object, without a preposition.
So you simply say kwenda sinema = go (to) cinema.
Why is there no “the” or “a” before sinema?
Swahili does not use articles like English. Definiteness (the vs. a) is understood from context.
Here, sinema can mean “the cinema” because you’re talking about a specific outing planned for tonight.
Is sinema a borrowed word? Does it change in the plural?
- Yes, sinema comes from French/Italian and is now a common Swahili term for movie theatre or cinema.
- It belongs to noun class 9/10, which is often invariable in singular and plural. So you say sinema for one theatre or several cinemas, relying on context or a number (e.g., sinema mbili = two cinemas).