Mama amesema uyoga wa leo una harufu nzuri kuliko ule wa jana.

Amesema comes from:

• a- = he/she
• -me- = perfect marker
• -sema = say

So amesema literally means he/she has said, but in natural English it is often translated simply as said, depending on context.

In this sentence, Mama amesema ... means Mom/Mother said ... or Mom/Mother has said ....

Swahili often leaves out the equivalent of that after verbs like say, know, think, and similar verbs.

So:

• Mama amesema uyoga wa leo...

can naturally mean:

• Mom said that today’s mushroom...

The that is understood from the structure and does not need to be stated.

Swahili does not use articles like the or a/an the way English does.

So Mama by itself can mean:

• mother
• mom
• the mother

depending on context.

If the speaker wanted to say my mother more explicitly, they could say mama yangu. But very often just Mama is enough.

Here una is not the usual present-tense -na- you see inside verbs like anasoma.

In una harufu, una is best understood as:

• u- = subject marker agreeing with uyoga
• -na = have / be with

So una harufu means it has a smell.

This is a very common Swahili pattern:

• ana njaa = he/she is hungry
  literally he/she has hunger
• ana hofu = he/she is afraid
  literally he/she has fear
• una harufu nzuri = it smells nice
  literally it has a good smell

Because uyoga belongs to a noun class that uses u--type agreement.

In Swahili, verbs and other words often have to agree with the noun’s class, not with what feels singular or plural in English. That is why you get:

• uyoga ... una ...
• uyoga ... ule ...
• uyoga wa ...

All of these forms are matching the agreement pattern of uyoga.

Wa leo means of today or more naturally today’s.

So:

• uyoga wa leo = today’s mushroom / the mushroom of today

The wa is a connective often called the associative marker. Its form changes to match the noun it follows. Here it matches uyoga, so you get wa.

This same pattern is very common in Swahili:

• kitabu cha mwanafunzi = the student’s book
• chakula cha jioni = evening food / dinner
• uyoga wa leo = today’s mushroom

Ule means that one or the one, and here it refers back to uyoga so the noun does not have to be repeated.

So:

• ule wa jana

literally means:

• that one of yesterday

but in natural English it means:

• yesterday’s one
• the one from yesterday
• simply yesterday’s mushroom

This is a very common Swahili way to avoid repeating a noun.

Because nzuri is describing harufu, not uyoga.

The structure is:

• una harufu nzuri
• has a good smell

So the adjective belongs with harufu:

• harufu nzuri = good smell

It does not mean that the mushroom itself is good in that part of the sentence. It means its smell is good.

That is why the sentence is about smell quality, not directly about the mushroom’s overall quality.

Kuliko means than in comparisons.

So:

• harufu nzuri kuliko ...

means:

• a better/nicer smell than ...
• more naturally, smells better than ...

In this sentence:

• una harufu nzuri kuliko ule wa jana

means that today’s mushroom has a nicer smell than yesterday’s.

So kuliko is the comparison word linking the two things being compared.

In this sentence, the grammar treats uyoga as singular or as a single item/mass, because it takes singular-type agreement such as:

• una
• ule

English may sometimes translate uyoga as mushroom or mushrooms depending on context, but here the Swahili grammar is clearly using singular-style agreement.

So a learner should mainly notice: the sentence is built as if talking about one grammatical item.

Yes. Literally, una harufu nzuri means it has a good smell.

But English often prefers a different structure:

• it smells good
• it smells nice
• it smells better than ...

So the Swahili and English structures are a little different:

• Swahili: has a good smell
• English: smells good

This is very normal. When learning Swahili, it helps to understand both the literal structure and the natural English translation.

Yes:

• Mama = mother / mom
• amesema = has said / said
• uyoga wa leo = today’s mushroom
• una = it has
• harufu nzuri = a good smell
• kuliko = than
• ule wa jana = the one from yesterday / yesterday’s one

A very literal reading is:

• Mom has said today’s mushroom has a good smell more than the one from yesterday.

But natural English would be:

• Mom said today’s mushroom smells better than yesterday’s.