Rais alisema bunge litatumia katiba hii kuboresha maisha ya taifa lote.

Alisema breaks down as:

• a- = subject marker for a singular person, meaning he/she
• -li- = past tense marker
• -sema = say

So alisema literally means he/she said. Because Rais refers to a person, Swahili uses the class 1 subject marker a-. Notice that Swahili does not mark gender here, so the same form can mean he said or she said.

Because bunge is not treated like a person grammatically. It belongs to noun class 5, and class 5 singular uses the subject marker li-.

So:

• bunge = parliament
• li- = class 5 subject marker
• -ta- = future
• -tumia = use

That gives litatumia = it will use.

Even though parliament is made up of people, grammatically it behaves like an institution here, so Swahili uses class agreement, not the personal marker a-.

Litatumia has three main parts:

• li- = subject marker agreeing with bunge
• -ta- = future tense
• -tumia = use

So the whole word means it will use.

This is very common in Swahili: a lot of information that English expresses with separate words is packed into one verb form.

In Swahili, demonstratives like this and that usually come after the noun, not before it.

So:

• katiba hii = this constitution
• taifa hilo = that nation

Also, hii agrees with katiba in noun class.

Kuboresha is an infinitive:

• ku- = infinitive marker, like English to
• -boresha = improve / make better

After another verb, an infinitive often shows purpose. So:

• litatumia katiba hii kuboresha...
  = it will use this constitution to improve...

So kuboresha answers the question for what purpose?

Maisha is commonly used as a plural noun in Swahili, even where English might say life in a more general sense.

Depending on context, maisha can mean:

• life
• lives
• living conditions
• livelihood

In this sentence, it most naturally refers to people’s lives or the living conditions of the nation.

Here ya is a connector meaning something like of.

So:

• maisha ya taifa lote
  = the lives of the whole nation

This connector changes form to agree with the noun before it. Since maisha belongs to class 6, the connector is ya.

Because lote has to agree with taifa, and taifa is a class 5 singular noun.

The adjective stem is -ote, meaning all / whole, but its form changes by noun class:

• taifa lote = the whole nation
• maisha yote = all the lives / all life

So lote is correct because it modifies taifa, not maisha.

It describes taifa.

In Swahili, modifiers usually come right after the noun they modify. Since the phrase is taifa lote, the meaning is the whole nation.

So:

• maisha ya taifa lote = the lives of the whole nation

If you wanted to say all lives, you would say maisha yote instead.

Swahili often leaves out kwamba, which can mean that in reported speech.

So both of these are possible:

• Rais alisema bunge litatumia katiba hii...
• Rais alisema kwamba bunge litatumia katiba hii...

Both are natural. The version without kwamba is very common.

Swahili does not backshift tense in reported speech as much as English does.

So after alisema, it is perfectly normal to keep the future marker inside the reported clause:

• alisema bunge litatumia...
  literally said parliament will use...

In English, we often change this to would use, but Swahili usually just keeps the tense that makes sense inside the reported statement itself. So English may translate it as either will use or would use, depending on style and context.