Kazi hii ni rahisi.

to be

Breakdown of Kazi hii ni rahisi.

• kazi: the job
• hii: this
• rahisi: cheap

Questions & Answers about Kazi hii ni rahisi.

Why is the sentence Kazi hii ni rahisi arranged in that order?

A very common Swahili pattern is:

noun + demonstrative + ni + adjective

So here you get:

• kazi = work / task
• hii = this
• ni = is
• rahisi = easy

That means Kazi hii ni rahisi follows a very normal Swahili structure. Unlike English, where this comes before the noun, Swahili usually puts the demonstrative after the noun: kazi hii, not normally hii kazi in neutral standard usage.

Why is it hii and not huu, hili, or something else?

Because hii has to agree with the noun class of kazi.

In Swahili, nouns belong to classes, and words connected to them often have to match that class. Kazi belongs to the N-class (often called class 9/10). The demonstrative for this with that class is hii.

So:

• mti huu = this tree
• jina hili = this name
• kazi hii = this work / this task

A learner from English often expects just one word for this, but in Swahili the form changes depending on the noun class.

What exactly does ni mean here?