Daktari alimwambia mtoto atoe ulimi ili aangalie koo lake.

Alimwambia can be broken down like this:

• a- = he/she
• -li- = past tense
• -mw- = him/her
• -ambia = tell / say to

So alimwambia means he/she told him/her. In this sentence, the subject is daktari, so the meaning is the doctor told him/her.

That is very normal in Swahili. The object marker -mw- can appear even when the full noun is also stated.

So alimwambia mtoto is literally something like he/she told him/her, the child, but in natural English it is just he/she told the child. This happens especially often with people and other specific, animate objects.

Because they are in the subjunctive.

In this sentence, the subjunctive is used:

• after alimwambia to show what the child was told to do
• after ili to show purpose

So:

• atoe = that he/she should take out / stick out
• aangalie = so that he/she may look

This is why the main verb is past (alimwambia), but these two verbs are not past-tense forms.

Grammatically, a- just means he/she, so by itself it does not tell you whether it is the doctor or the child. But after alimwambia mtoto ..., the following subjunctive clause usually gives the action that the person being told should do.

So alimwambia mtoto atoe ulimi is understood as he told the child to stick out his/her tongue.

Swahili often does not need a separate word like English that in this kind of sentence. Instead, it uses the subjunctive directly after verbs like tell, ask, order, or want.

So alimwambia mtoto atoe ulimi naturally means he told the child to stick out his tongue.

Ili means so that or in order that. It introduces a purpose clause.

So:

• ili aangalie koo lake = so that he/she could look at his/her throat

It is very common for ili to be followed by a subjunctive verb.

The verb aangalie has the subject marker a-, which means he/she. Swahili does not mark gender here, so the form itself does not tell you he or she.

In this sentence, context tells us that it is most likely the doctor who is going to look. So the natural reading is so that the doctor could examine the child's throat.

Because it is made from:

• a- = he/she
• angalie = subjunctive form of angalia

When these come together, you get a-angalie, written as aangalie. So the double a is just the result of the subject prefix joining the verb form.

Because possessives in Swahili must agree with the noun class of the noun they describe.

Koo belongs to a noun class that takes la- in this kind of possessive form, so:

• koo lake = his/her throat

The ending -ake means his/her, but the beginning changes to match the noun class:

• lake
• yake
• chake
• wake, etc.

So lake is correct because of koo.

Because with body parts, Swahili often leaves out the possessive if the owner is obvious from context.

So atoe ulimi naturally means stick out his/her tongue. You can say ulimi wake if you want extra emphasis or contrast, but it is not necessary here.

Yes, literally kutoa often means take out, remove, or put out. But with ulimi, the natural idiomatic meaning is stick out the tongue.

So atoe ulimi is a normal way to say let him/her stick out the tongue.

Because Swahili does not have articles like English the and a/an.

So words like daktari, mtoto, ulimi, and koo can mean the doctor / a doctor, the child / a child, and so on. The exact meaning depends on context.