Learn Hardcore Swahili: Dada yako hupenda mpira wa wavu, lakini kaka wako hucheza tenisi na marafiki. - Your sister usually likes volleyball, but your brother plays tennis with friends.

Dada yako hupenda mpira wa wavu ≈ Your sister (generally) likes volleyball.
Kaka wako hucheza tenisi na marafiki ≈ Your brother (regularly) plays tennis with friends.

The idea is “this is their habit,” not just what they are doing right now.

Could we say “Dada yako anapenda…” and “kaka wako anacheza…” instead? What’s the difference?

Yes, both are possible, but the nuance changes slightly.

anapenda / anacheza
– basic present tense
– can mean likes / is liking or plays / is playing (around now)
– often neutral between “generally” and “right now,” depending on context
hupenda / hucheza
– specifically habitual
– “(generally) likes”, “usually plays”, “tends to play”

So:

Dada yako anapenda mpira wa wavu – your sister likes volleyball.
Dada yako hupenda mpira wa wavu – your sister generally likes / is the kind of person who likes volleyball.

In many everyday situations, Swahili speakers might still use anapenda, but hupenda makes the “habitual” meaning explicit.

I learned that hupendi means “you don’t like.” So why does dada yako hupenda mean “your sister likes”?

There are actually two different “hu-” prefixes in Swahili:

Negative 2nd-person singular present
- With you (wewe) as the subject, hu- can mean “you don’t (do X)”:
  - wewe hupendi chai = you don’t like tea.
Habitual marker
- With a third-person subject like dada yako or kaka wako, hu- marks a habit:
  - dada yako hupenda mpira wa wavu = your sister usually likes / is fond of volleyball.

In dada yako hupenda, the subject is “your sister”, not “you”, so the listener knows this hu- is the habitual one, not the 2nd-person negative. Context and subject agreement tell you which “hu-” it is.

Why is it dada yako but kaka wako? Why yako in one place and wako in the other?

The difference comes from noun classes, not from biological gender.

dada (sister) belongs to noun class 9/10.
For class 9/10, “your (sg)” is yako.
→ dada yako = your sister
kaka (brother) belongs to noun class 1/2 (the typical “person” class).
For class 1/2, “your (sg)” is wako.
→ kaka wako = your brother

So:

yako agrees with nouns of class 9/10 (like dada).
wako agrees with nouns of class 1/2 (like kaka, rafiki (sg), mwalimu, etc.).

It’s about agreement with the noun class, not about male/female.

What does mpira wa wavu literally mean, and why is that the word for “volleyball”?

Literally:

mpira = ball
wa = of (linking word)
wavu = net

So mpira wa wavu = “ball of net”, i.e. the ball used with a net → volleyball.

Swahili often builds new nouns this way:

juisi ya machungwa – juice of oranges = orange juice
gari la moshi – car of smoke = train
chumba cha kulala – room of sleeping = bedroom

Here, wa is the appropriate linking word because mpira is in noun class 3, and wa is the genitive/linker for that class.

Why is it mpira wa wavu and not mpira ya wavu or something else?

The linking word (“of”) has to agree with the first noun’s class.

mpira is in noun class 3.
For class 3, the “of” word is wa.

Common “of” forms (very simplified):

Class 1/3: wa
Class 4/6/9/10: ya
Class 5: la
Class 7: cha
Class 8: vya

So:

mpira wa wavu (ball of net) – correct
mpira ya wavu – would be ungrammatical, because ya doesn’t agree with mpira.

In na marafiki, does na mean “with” or “and”? Could it also mean “and friends”?

na can mean both “and” and “with”, depending on context.

Here:

kaka wako hucheza tenisi na marafiki
is most naturally understood as
→ your brother plays tennis *with friends.*

If it meant “and friends” (as a list), you’d expect something like:

kaka wako hucheza tenisi na mpira wa kikapu na marafiki – plays tennis and basketball and (other) friends (still a bit odd).

In practice, when you see verb + [object] + na + people, it almost always means “with [people]”:

anacheza mpira na kaka yake – he/she plays football with his/her brother.

Why isn’t there a word for “his/her” before marafiki? How would you say “with his friends” or “with her friends”?

Swahili often leaves possessives out when the owner is already clear from context.

In kaka wako hucheza tenisi na marafiki, the most natural interpretation is:

your brother plays tennis with (his) friends.

The “his” is understood from kaka wako (your brother). If you want to say it explicitly, you can add a possessive:

na marafiki zake – with his/her friends
na marafiki wake – also possible in many dialects for class 2 nouns

So, e.g.:

Kaka wako hucheza tenisi na marafiki zake.
→ Your brother plays tennis with his friends.

Is there any grammatical gender in words like dada (sister) and kaka (brother)? Do adjectives or verbs change for male vs female?

Swahili does not have grammatical gender like many European languages.

dada is female in meaning,
kaka is male in meaning,

but:

Their adjectives, verbs, and possessives follow noun-class rules, not male/female rules.
Verbs don’t change for male vs female:
- dada yako anapenda… – your sister likes…
- kaka yako anapenda… – your brother likes…
  The verb anapenda is the same.

So biological sex is only in the meaning of the noun (sister vs brother), not in the grammar system.

Where are the words “a” and “the” in this sentence? How do you say them in Swahili?

Swahili does not have separate words for “a/an” or “the”. The bare noun can mean any of these, and context decides:

dada yako
– your sister / your (the) sister (there’s only one “your sister” in context).
mpira wa wavu
– volleyball, a volleyball, or the volleyball depending on the situation.
marafiki
– friends, some friends, or the friends.

If you need to be more specific, you use other words (like huyu, yule, hawa, wale, etc. – this, that, these, those), but there is no direct “the/a” equivalent.

What is the singular of marafiki, and is the plural form irregular?

Yes, it’s slightly irregular because it’s a loanword.

Singular: rafiki – friend
Plural: marafiki – friends

So you get:

rafiki yangu – my friend
marafiki wangu – my friends

The plural is formed with the prefix ma-, which is common in Swahili, but rafiki → marafiki doesn’t follow the most basic “m-/wa-” or “ki-/vi-” patterns learners see first, so it often feels irregular.

Is the word order here fixed? Can we move parts around, like in English?

Swahili basic word order is also Subject–Verb–Object (SVO), just like English:

Dada yako (Subject) hupenda (Verb) mpira wa wavu (Object).
Kaka wako (Subject) hucheza (Verb) tenisi na marafiki (Object).

You cannot freely move the verb to the end or the subject after the verb the way you might in some languages. For example:

✔ Kaka wako hucheza tenisi na marafiki.
✘ Hucheza kaka wako tenisi na marafiki. (ungrammatical in normal speech)

Within noun phrases, however, the typical order is:

noun + descriptors (possessive, adjectives, etc.)
e.g. dada yako mzuri – your nice sister (literally: sister your nice).