Mtoto aliegemeza shavu kwenye kiwiko chake alipokuwa akisikiliza hadithi ya bibi.

Mtoto means child and does not show gender by itself. In Swahili, many nouns referring to people are not marked for male vs. female the way English sometimes is.

So in this sentence, mtoto could mean:

• the child
• the boy
• the girl

You usually learn the gender from context, or it may simply not matter.

Aliegemeza can be broken down like this:

• a- = subject marker for he/she in the human singular class
• -li- = past tense
• -egemeza = rest/lean something against something

So a-li-egemeza means he/she rested or he/she leaned something.

A useful point: the verb here is in the simple past, so it tells you the action happened in the past.

This is a very good question because the two are related but not identical.

• -egemea usually means lean on or depend on
• -egemeza usually means lean something against or rest something on

In this sentence, the child is doing something to the cheek:

• the child is resting the cheek on the elbow

So -egemeza fits better because it is more transitive: it describes placing one thing against another.

Very roughly:

• aliegemea kiwiko chake = he/she leaned on his/her elbow
• aliegemeza shavu kwenye kiwiko chake = he/she rested his/her cheek on his/her elbow

Swahili normally does not use articles like English a, an, or the.

So:

• mtoto can mean a child or the child
• shavu can mean a cheek or the cheek
• kiwiko can mean an elbow or the elbow

Which one sounds best is decided by context and by the translation you are given.

Kwenye is a locative word meaning something like:

• on
• in
• at
• onto

The exact English choice depends on context.

Here, kwenye kiwiko chake is best understood as on his/her elbow or against his/her elbow.

So kwenye is marking the place where the cheek was resting.

Because possessives in Swahili agree with the thing possessed, not with the owner.

Here, the possessed noun is kiwiko = elbow.
Kiwiko belongs to noun class 7, and the possessive form that matches this class is -chake for his/her own.

So:

• kiwiko chake = his/her elbow

Compare:

• mtoto wake = his/her child
  Here the noun is mtoto, which is in a different noun class, so the possessive is wake, not chake.

This is one of the most important noun-class patterns to get used to in Swahili.

It literally means something like:

• when he/she was being in the process of listening
• more naturally: when he/she was listening or while he/she was listening

It has two parts:

• alipokuwa
• akisikiliza

Alipokuwa introduces a time frame in the past: when he/she was.
Akisikiliza gives the ongoing action: listening / while listening.

Together they describe a background action happening at the same time as the main action.

So the sentence is structured like:

• main action: the child rested the cheek on the elbow
• background action: while listening to grandmother’s story

This is a very common learner question.

• alisikiliza = he/she listened
• akisikiliza = while he/she was listening / as he/she listened

So alisikiliza is a normal past action.
But akisikiliza often shows an action happening at the same time as another action.

In this sentence, akisikiliza works well because the child is listening while resting the cheek on the elbow.

You can think of a-ki-sikiliza as:

• a- = he/she
• -ki- = while/in the course of
• -sikiliza = listen

Ya is the connector meaning something like of. It must agree with the noun before it.

Here:

• hadithi = story
• ya = of
• bibi = grandmother / old lady

So:

• hadithi ya bibi = grandmother’s story or the story of grandmother

The reason it is ya is that hadithi belongs to a noun class that takes ya as its connector.

This same pattern appears in many phrases:

• habari ya mtoto = the child’s news / news about the child
• nguo ya mtoto = the child’s clothes item / garment of the child

Not always.

Bibi can mean:

• grandmother
• old woman
• sometimes a respectful way of referring to an elderly woman

So in hadithi ya bibi, the exact meaning depends on context.

If the meaning provided to the learner says grandmother, then that is the intended meaning here. But it is useful to know that bibi is broader than English grandmother in some contexts.

Yes, it is very normal.

The basic order is:

• Mtoto = subject
• aliegemeza = verb
• shavu = object
• kwenye kiwiko chake = place/location phrase
• alipokuwa akisikiliza hadithi ya bibi = time/background clause

So the structure is basically:

Subject + Verb + Object + Location + Time/Background clause

That is a very natural Swahili sentence pattern.