Breakdown of Familia yetu inaishi pamoja nyumbani kwa amani.
Questions & Answers about Familia yetu inaishi pamoja nyumbani kwa amani.
- familia – family
- yetu – our
- inaishi – lives / is living
- pamoja – together
- nyumbani – at home / in the home
- kwa – by / with / in (here: in or with)
- amani – peace
So the sentence is literally: Family our lives together at home in/with peace.
In Swahili, possessive adjectives (my, your, our, etc.) normally come after the noun they describe:
- familia yetu – our family
- rafiki yangu – my friend
- kitabu chako – your book
Putting the possessive before the noun (yetu familia) is ungrammatical in standard Swahili.
Swahili agreement follows grammatical number, not logical number.
- familia belongs to noun class 9/10, which usually takes i- as the subject prefix in the present tense.
- So you get inaishi (it lives), not wanaishi (they live).
Even though a family is made of many people, grammatically familia is treated as a single unit, so the verb agrees with it as singular:
- Familia yetu inaishi… – Our family lives…
If you wanted to emphasize the individual members, you’d use a plural noun like watu (people):
- Watu wa familia yetu wanaishi… – The people of our family live…
inaishi comes from the verb kuishi (to live, to reside). The form inaishi can be broken down as:
- i- – subject prefix for class 9/10 singular (here: familia)
- -na- – present tense marker (is/are doing now, usually translated as simple present)
- -ishi – verb root ishi (live, reside)
So inaishi literally means it-is-living → lives / is living.
Both can be used when talking about where someone lives, but there are nuances:
kuishi – to live/reside (more about where your home is)
- Ninaishi Dar es Salaam. – I live in Dar es Salaam.
kukaa – to stay, sit, reside (also used for living somewhere, often more colloquial or context‑dependent)
- Ninakaa Dar es Salaam. – I stay/live in Dar es Salaam.
In your sentence, inaishi is the more straightforward choice for lives in the sense of resides.
pamoja literally means together / as one.
In this sentence:
- inaishi pamoja – lives together
If you want to say with someone (not necessarily emphasizing “togetherness”), you usually use na:
- Ninaishi na wazazi wangu. – I live with my parents.
You can combine them:
- Ninaishi pamoja na wazazi wangu. – I live together with my parents.
Here, pamoja stresses the idea of unity / living as one group.
- nyumba – house / home (basic noun)
- nyumbani – at home / in the house
nyumbani is formed by adding -ni, a locative ending, to say that something is in/at that place.
Examples:
- Niko nyumbani. – I am at home.
- Anaingia nyumbani. – He/She is entering the house.
In your sentence, nyumbani means at home / in the home.
You could say Familia yetu inaishi pamoja katika nyumba, but it sounds less natural and more like inside a house (as a building) rather than at home as a settled place of living.
nyumbani is the normal, idiomatic way to say at home.
kwa is a very flexible preposition. Common meanings include by, with, in, using, through, for.
In kwa amani, it expresses the manner or state in which something happens:
- kwa amani – in peace / peacefully
- kwa furaha – with joy / joyfully
- kwa hasira – angrily / in anger
You could say Familia yetu inaishi pamoja nyumbani amani, but that would sound ungrammatical or at least very unnatural. In this kind of expression of manner, kwa is needed.
Yes, Swahili word order is fairly flexible for adverbial phrases like this, though some positions sound more natural. For example:
- Familia yetu inaishi pamoja nyumbani kwa amani.
- Familia yetu inaishi kwa amani pamoja nyumbani.
- Familia yetu inaishi nyumbani kwa amani pamoja. (possible, but stylistically weaker)
The original version (…pamoja nyumbani kwa amani) is very natural and clear. Moving kwa amani earlier is possible but slightly changes emphasis.
Possessive adjectives in Swahili must match the noun class of the noun they modify.
- familia is in class 9/10.
- The class 9/10 form for our is yetu.
Compare with other classes:
- mtoto wetu – our child (class 1, prefix w-)
- kitabu chetu – our book (class 7, prefix ch-)
- vitabu vyetu – our books (class 8, prefix vy-)
So with familia, the correct form is familia yetu.
Yes, and it would be perfectly natural. The difference is:
- Familia yetu inaishi… – more explicit, emphasizes the family as the subject.
- Tunaishi… – we live…; the subject is we, understood from context to be the family members.
Use Familia yetu inaishi… when you want to explicitly talk about the family (perhaps describing it to someone). Use Tunaishi… when speaking as a member of the family.
A few tips:
- inaishi – pronounce as i-na-i-shi (four syllables). The a and i are both fully pronounced; avoid collapsing to something like in-eesh.
- pamoja – pa-mo-ja, with j like English j in jam.
- nyumbani – nyu-ba-ni (3 syllables: nyu like new with ny blended, then ba, then ni). The ny is like ñ in Spanish señor.
- amani – a-ma-ni, all vowels clear and short; stress is even, but many learners slightly stress the second syllable: a-MA-ni.
Swahili vowels are pure and consistent: a, e, i, o, u are always pronounced the same way, and almost every letter is sounded.