Mabaki ya kitoweo cha jana yako ndani ya jokofu, na tutayapasha jioni.

Kitoweo is a broad food word in Swahili. It usually means the dish eaten together with a staple such as ugali, rice, or chapati. Depending on context, it can be translated as stew, sauce, curry, relish, or simply the dish that goes with the starch.

So in this sentence, translating it as stew is natural, but kitoweo is a little broader than the English word stew.

Grammatically, mabaki is treated as a class 6 plural noun. It means leftovers, remains, or the rest of something.

That matters because other words in the sentence must agree with it. That is why you see class 6 agreement in:

• ya kitoweo
• yako
• tutayapasha

Even though English leftovers can sometimes feel like a mass noun, in Swahili mabaki clearly controls plural-type agreement.

Because Swahili is linking together two different noun relationships:

1. mabaki ya kitoweo = leftovers of stew
2. kitoweo cha jana = stew of yesterday / yesterday’s stew

So the full phrase literally works like:

• mabaki = leftovers
• ya kitoweo = of stew
• cha jana = of yesterday

Together: leftovers of yesterday’s stew.

Swahili uses agreement on these connectors, so the form changes depending on the noun class of the noun being described.

Because the connector agrees with the noun that comes before it:

• mabaki is a class 6 noun, so the connector is ya
• kitoweo is a class 7 noun, so the connector is cha

So:

• mabaki ya kitoweo = leftovers of stew
• kitoweo cha jana = yesterday’s stew

This is a very common Swahili pattern. The connector is not one fixed word meaning of; it changes by noun class.

Here, yako does not mean your.

In this sentence, yako is a locative verb form, built from:

• ya- = subject agreement for mabaki (class 6)
• -ko = a locative stem meaning be located / be there

So yako ndani ya jokofu means they are in the fridge or more literally they are located inside the fridge.

This is easy to confuse with possessive yako meaning your/yours, but here it is a completely different grammatical form.

Because ni is usually used for identification or classification, not normal location.

Compare:

• Mabaki ni chakula. = The leftovers are food.
• Mabaki yako ndani ya jokofu. = The leftovers are inside the fridge.

When Swahili talks about where something is, it often uses locative forms such as:

• -ko
• -mo
• -po

So yako is the natural choice here because the sentence is talking about location.

Ndani ya jokofu literally means inside of the refrigerator.

Breaking it down:

• ndani = inside, interior
• ya = of
• jokofu = refrigerator / fridge

So this is the same kind of structure as:

• juu ya meza = on top of the table
• mbele ya nyumba = in front of the house
• ndani ya gari = inside the car

In Swahili, words like ndani, juu, and mbele often behave like nouns or noun-like location words, so they are followed by this connector.

Tutayapasha can be broken into parts:

• tu- = we
• -ta- = future tense
• -ya- = them (object marker agreeing with mabaki)
• -pasha = heat, warm

So the whole verb means we will heat them.

This is very normal in Swahili: object pronouns are often built directly into the verb instead of being separate words.

Because Swahili commonly uses an object marker inside the verb.

In tutayapasha, the -ya- stands for them, referring back to mabaki.

So instead of saying something like we will heat them with a separate word them, Swahili often says it in one verb form.

If the object were a different noun class, the object marker would change. For example:

• chakula (class 7) → tutakipasha = we will heat it
• mabaki (class 6) → tutayapasha = we will heat them

Literally, kupasha means to heat or to warm up.

In this sentence, because the subject is leftovers, the natural English meaning is reheat. Swahili does not always need a special separate word for re- the way English sometimes does. The context already makes that idea clear.

So:

• literal sense: heat them
• natural English translation here: reheat them

Jioni means evening. In this sentence, it naturally means this evening or in the evening.

Swahili often uses time words without a preposition:

• leo = today
• kesho = tomorrow
• asubuhi = morning / in the morning
• jioni = evening / in the evening

So tutayapasha jioni is normal Swahili for we’ll heat them this evening.

If someone wanted to be extra explicit, they could say jioni hii = this evening.

Because Swahili has no articles like English a, an, and the.

Whether something is the leftovers, some leftovers, or leftovers is usually understood from context.

So Mabaki ya kitoweo cha jana can naturally mean:

• the leftovers of yesterday’s stew
• leftover stew from yesterday

The specific meaning comes from the situation, not from an article.