Barua niliyoandika leo ni fupi.

The letter that I wrote today is short.

Breakdown of Barua niliyoandika leo ni fupi.

• ni: to be
• leo: today
• barua: the letter
• fupi: short
• niliyoandika: which I wrote

Questions & Answers about Barua niliyoandika leo ni fupi.

What does each word in Barua niliyoandika leo ni fupi correspond to in English, word by word?

Roughly, you can line it up like this:

• Barua – letter
• niliyoandika – that I wrote
• leo – today
• ni – is
• fupi – short

So the whole thing is: “The letter that I wrote today is short.”

What exactly is inside the word niliyoandika? How is it built?

Niliyoandika is one verb form made of several pieces stuck together:

• ni- – subject prefix for “I”
• -li- – past tense marker (did / -ed)
• -yo- – relative marker agreeing with barua (class 9)
• -andika – verb root “write”

So ni-li-yo-andika literally means “I-PAST-that (class 9)-write”, i.e. “that I wrote” referring back to barua.

What does the -yo- in niliyoandika do, and why is it -yo- specifically?

-yo- is a relative marker. It does two jobs at once:

1. It introduces a relative clause (“that / which” in English).
2. It shows agreement with the noun it is describing.

Here that noun is barua, which belongs to noun class 9/10.
The relative marker for class 9/10 is -yo-, so we get:

• barua niliyoandika – the letter that I wrote

For other noun classes you get different forms, for example:

• mtu niliyemuona – the person whom I saw (class 1, -ye-)
• kitabu nilichoandika – the book that I wrote (class 7, -cho-)

So it’s -yo- here specifically because barua is class 9.

Why isn’t there a separate word for “that”, like ambayo, in this sentence?

Swahili has two main ways to say “that / which” in relative clauses:

1. Using a relative marker inside the verb (what your sentence does)

   • Barua niliyoandika leo ni fupi.
     → relative marker -yo- is inside niliyoandika.

2. Using a separate relative pronoun like ambayo, ambaye, ambacho, etc.

   • Barua ambayo niliandika leo ni fupi.
     → ambayo stands for “that” and agrees with barua (class 9).

Both are correct Swahili.
The version with the marker inside the verb (niliyoandika) is very common and often feels a bit more compact and natural in everyday speech.

Can I say Barua ambayo niliandika leo ni fupi instead? Does it mean the same thing?

Yes, you can say:

• Barua ambayo niliandika leo ni fupi.

This also means “The letter that I wrote today is short.”

Differences:

• Barua niliyoandika leo…
  – relative marker is inside the verb (-yo-).
• Barua ambayo niliandika leo…
  – relative pronoun ambayo is a separate word, and the verb is just niliandika (no -yo-).

They’re both standard. Textbooks sometimes treat the verb-internal type (niliyoandika) as the basic pattern to master first.

Why is the order Barua niliyoandika… and not Niliyoandika barua… like in English “I wrote a letter”?

Here we are not simply saying “I wrote a letter today”.
We are saying “The letter that I wrote today…”, so barua is the head noun of a relative clause.

In Swahili:

• The head noun normally comes first,
• and the relative clause describing it comes after it.

So:

• Barua niliyoandika leo…
  = The letter [that I wrote today]…

If you say:

• Niliandika barua leo.
  = I wrote a letter today. (simple sentence, not a relative clause)

Niliyoandika barua… on its own would be ungrammatical as a relative clause; Swahili needs the noun first, then the clause that describes it.

Where can leo go in this sentence? Could I move it around?

In your sentence, leo is placed inside the relative clause:

• Barua niliyoandika leo ni fupi.
  = The letter that I wrote today is short.

Other natural placements (with slightly different focus) include:

• Leo niliandika barua fupi.
  = Today I wrote a short letter. (no relative clause; just a normal sentence)

What is not natural with your original structure is:

• Barua niliyoandika ni fupi leo.
  This sounds odd; leo at the very end is not how you usually place a time word in this kind of sentence.

So, for the relative version, keeping leo close to the verb it modifies (niliyoandika) is best:
Barua niliyoandika leo ni fupi.

What does ni do here? Could I leave it out?

Ni is the copula, similar to English “is”:

• Barua niliyoandika leo ni fupi.
  = The letter … is short.

In this exact sentence, ni is needed. Without it:

• Barua niliyoandika leo fupi. ✗ (ungrammatical in standard Swahili)

There is another common pattern where you can omit ni, but the structure changes:

• Barua hii fupi.
  = This letter is short. (literally: this letter short)

In your sentence, because the predicate is just an adjective phrase following ni (ni fupi), you should keep ni.

Why doesn’t fupi change in the plural? How would I say “The letters I wrote today are short”?

The noun barua is both singular and plural (class 9/10), so its form does not change:

• barua – letter / letters

The adjective fupi also normally stays the same for this noun class:

• barua fupi – a short letter / short letters

To make your whole sentence plural, you mainly change the relative marker to agree with plural barua (class 10 uses -zo- instead of -yo-):

• Barua nilizoandika leo ni fupi.
  = The letters that I wrote today are short.

Breakdown of nilizoandika:

• ni- – I
• -li- – past
• -zo- – relative marker for class 10 (plural barua)
• -andika – write

Notice barua and fupi both stay the same in form.

How would the sentence change if the subject were “you” or “he/she” instead of “I”?

Only the subject prefix at the start of niliyoandika changes. The rest of the sentence stays the same.

• I wrote → ni-li-yo-andika
• you (sg) wrote → u-li-yo-andika
• he/she wrote → a-li-yo-andika

So:

• Barua uliyoiandika leo ni fupi.
  = The letter you wrote today is short.

• Barua aliyoandika leo ni fupi.
  = The letter he/she wrote today is short.

(If you’re just starting, focus on recognizing that the ni- in niliyoandika is the “I” part; you’ll meet the other subject prefixes as you go.)