Bibi hupenda chai yenye iliki na pilipili manga wakati wa baridi.

Bibi most commonly means grandmother in a sentence like this.

Depending on context, bibi can also mean an old woman, a lady, or even a wife in some expressions, but here the most natural reading is grandmother.

Hupenda shows a habitual meaning: something someone generally, usually, or characteristically likes.

So:

• Bibi hupenda chai... = Grandmother likes / usually likes tea...
• Bibi anapenda chai... = Grandmother likes / is liking tea... in a more ordinary present sense

In many contexts, English just says likes, but Swahili hu- often adds the idea of a regular habit or general preference.

In this habitual form, hu- itself is doing the tense/aspect job, and the subject is already clear from Bibi.

So the sentence does not need another subject marker on the verb. This is normal in Swahili with the habitual form:

• Bibi hupenda...
• Watoto hula... = Children usually eat...
• Mimi husoma... = I usually read...

A helpful way to think about it is that hu- is a special verb form used for repeated or usual actions.

Yenye means something like that has, which has, or with.

So:

• chai yenye iliki na pilipili manga

literally means:

• tea that has cardamom and black pepper

In natural English, that often becomes simply:

• tea with cardamom and black pepper

Because yenye must agree with the noun it describes, and here it describes chai.

In Swahili, words like yenye change according to noun class. Chai belongs to the class that takes yenye in this kind of structure.

So:

• chai yenye ... = tea that has ...
• nyumba yenye ... = house that has ...

This is an example of noun-class agreement, which is a very important part of Swahili grammar.

Yes, in everyday speech that can be understood as tea with cardamom and black pepper.

But chai yenye iliki na pilipili manga is a bit clearer and more explicit. It specifically describes the tea as containing those ingredients.

So the difference is roughly:

• chai na iliki... = tea with cardamom...
• chai yenye iliki... = tea that has cardamom...

Both are possible, but yenye is a nice descriptive structure to learn.

Pilipili manga means black pepper.

This is useful because pilipili by itself often makes learners think of chili pepper or hot pepper. The added word manga specifies that it is black pepper, the spice.

So:

• pilipili = pepper / chili pepper, depending on context
• pilipili manga = black pepper

Literally, it means the time of cold.

Breakdown:

• wakati = time
• wa = of
• baridi = cold / cold weather

So:

• wakati wa baridi = during the cold time, in cold weather, or during winter

This is a very common Swahili way to build time expressions.

Not always.

In many Swahili-speaking contexts, baridi often refers more generally to cold weather or the cold season, not necessarily the four-season idea of winter used in places like Europe or North America.

So depending on context, wakati wa baridi may be understood as:

• in winter
• during the cold season
• when it is cold

Because Swahili does not use articles like English a, an, and the.

So:

• Bibi can mean grandmother, the grandmother, or sometimes just Grandma, depending on context.
• chai can mean tea, the tea, or some tea, depending on context.

English requires articles much more often than Swahili does, so this is something English speakers need to get used to.

The sentence follows a very common Swahili pattern:

• Bibi — subject
• hupenda — verb
• chai yenye iliki na pilipili manga — object with description
• wakati wa baridi — time expression

So the structure is basically:

Subject + Verb + Object + Time

That is one reason this sentence is fairly friendly for English speakers: the overall word order feels quite familiar, even though the details of the grammar are different.