Mwalimu alisema watoto waanze na irabu kabla hawajajifunza konsonanti ngumu.

In Swahili, you often do not need a separate word for that in sentences like this.

So:

Mwalimu alisema watoto waanze...

literally looks like:

The teacher said the children should start...

English usually prefers said that..., but Swahili commonly leaves that unstated.

Alisema can be broken down like this:

• a- = he/she
• -li- = past tense
• -sema = say/speak

So alisema means he/she said.

Because mwalimu can mean either a male or female teacher, alisema does not tell you the teacher’s gender by itself.

Waanze is a subjunctive form, not an ordinary present tense form.

• wanaanza = they are starting / they start
• waanze = they should start / let them start

After verbs like said, told, wanted, asked, or advised, Swahili often uses the subjunctive to express what someone wants or says should happen.

So here:

Mwalimu alisema watoto waanze...

means something like:

The teacher said the children should start...

not simply The teacher said the children start...

The final -e is a very common sign of the subjunctive in Swahili.

Compare:

• wanaanza = they start / they are starting
• waanze = they should start

So the -e helps show that this is about a desired, suggested, ordered, or expected action rather than a plain statement of fact.

The wa- is the subject marker for they in the noun class used for people in the plural.

Here it refers to watoto = children.

So:

• watoto = children
• waanze = they should start

You can think of it as Swahili repeating the subject inside the verb.

No. Here na means with.

So:

kuanza na irabu = to start with vowels

Even though na very often means and, it also commonly means with, depending on context.

In practice, irabu can be understood as vowel or vowels, depending on context.

In this sentence, the meaning is clearly vowels:

waanze na irabu = they should start with vowels

This happens because some Swahili nouns, especially loanwords, can have the same form in singular and plural.

This is a very common Swahili pattern.

• kabla = before
• hawajajifunza = they have not learned yet

After kabla, Swahili often uses a negative perfect form to express the idea before something has happened.

So:

kabla hawajajifunza konsonanti ngumu

means:

before they learn difficult consonants
or
before they have learned difficult consonants

Even though the verb is negative in form, the whole phrase is naturally translated with before in English.

Yes:

• ha- = negative
• wa- = they
• -ja- = perfect marker used in negative forms
• ji- = reflexive/self element
• -funza = teach
• -a = final vowel

So hawajajifunza literally looks like they have not taught themselves, but in normal Swahili kujifunza simply means to learn.

In this sentence, after kabla, it gives the sense before they learn / before they have learned.

Because that is the normal Swahili verb for learn.

It is built from -funza = teach, with ji- added, so historically it is like teach oneself. But you usually should not translate it word-for-word every time. As a whole, kujifunza just means to learn.

Compare:

• kufunza = to teach
• kujifunza = to learn

So hawajajifunza means they have not learned.

Konsonanti is a loanword that behaves like a noun in the N-class (class 9/10), where singular and plural often look the same.

The adjective ngumu is the normal agreeing form here, and it also often looks the same in singular and plural.

So:

• konsonanti ngumu = difficult consonant
• konsonanti ngumu = difficult consonants

Context tells you whether it is singular or plural. In this sentence, it is naturally understood as difficult consonants.

Swahili usually does not have direct equivalents of English articles like a/an and the.

So words like:

• mwalimu
• watoto
• irabu
• konsonanti ngumu

can be understood as the teacher, the children, vowels, the difficult consonants, and so on, depending on context.

Swahili relies much more on context than English does for this.