Gharama za chakula zimeongezeka.

A natural word-for-word breakdown is:

• gharama = costs, expenses, price/cost
• za = of for this noun class
• chakula = food
• zimeongezeka = have increased / have gone up

So the whole sentence means Food costs have increased or The cost of food has gone up, depending on context.

Because za has to agree with gharama.

In Swahili, the connector meaning of changes form depending on the noun class of the noun before it. This is called agreement.

Here:

• gharama takes the agreement form za
• so gharama za chakula = costs of food / food costs

If the noun before -a belonged to a different noun class, you would use a different form, such as ya, wa, la, and so on.

The zi- matches the subject gharama.

Swahili verbs usually include a subject marker at the beginning. In this sentence:

• zi- = subject marker agreeing with gharama
• -me- = perfect aspect, often translated as have
• ongezeka = increase, rise

So zimeongezeka literally means something like they-have-increased, where they refers to gharama.

Because in this sentence gharama is being treated as plural in meaning: costs or expenses.

A tricky thing for English speakers is that some Swahili nouns do not change form between singular and plural. Gharama can stay gharama in both cases, but the agreement shows how it is being treated.

Here the agreement is plural:

• za
• zi-

So the sentence is built as costs have increased, not the cost has increased.

If you wanted a more clearly singular idea, you might say something like Bei ya chakula imeongezeka = The price of food has increased.

-me- is a tense/aspect marker often used for something completed with present relevance. In many cases, English translates it with have.

So:

• zimeongezeka = have increased
• not just increase
• not exactly were increasing

It tells you the increase has already happened and the result matters now.

This is a very common question.

• kuongezeka = to increase, to go up, to become more
  This is usually intransitive: the subject itself increases.
• kuongeza = to increase something, to add, to make something greater
  This is usually transitive: someone causes the increase.

So:

• Gharama zimeongezeka = Costs have increased
• Wameongeza gharama = They have increased the costs

In your sentence, zimeongezeka is correct because the costs themselves are going up.

No. It is better understood as an intransitive verb, not a passive one.

English sometimes says costs were increased, which sounds passive, but this Swahili sentence does not mean that. It means:

• the costs went up
• the costs increased

If you wanted to emphasize that someone caused the increase, Swahili would normally use a different structure, often with kuongeza.

Because Swahili usually does not use articles like English a and the, and it often builds tense/aspect directly into the verb.

So in this sentence:

• there is no separate word for the
• there is no separate word for have
• the meaning of have increased is contained in zimeongezeka

This is very normal in Swahili. English often uses extra helper words; Swahili often packs that information into the verb.

Yes. That is also a very common and natural sentence.

There is a slight nuance:

• bei ya chakula = the price of food
• gharama za chakula = food costs / the costs of food

Bei often points more directly to price, while gharama can feel broader, like cost or expense.

So both can work, but they are not always identical in nuance.

Good question.

• zimeongezeka = have increased / have gone up
• zinaongezeka = are increasing / increase

So:

• Gharama za chakula zimeongezeka means the rise has already happened.
• Gharama za chakula zinaongezeka means the costs are in the process of rising, or generally tend to rise.

This is a very important distinction in Swahili verb forms.

Usually chakula means food, and context tells you whether it is general food or a particular meal.

In this sentence, chakula is most naturally understood as food in general. So gharama za chakula means food costs, not the cost of one specific meal.

If you wanted to talk about different kinds of foods, you might sometimes see vyakula, but chakula is the normal word here.

A simple pronunciation guide is:

gha-RA-ma za cha-KU-la zi-me-o-nge-ZE-ka

A few helpful points:

• Swahili words are usually stressed on the second-to-last syllable
• ch sounds like ch in church
• z sounds like English z
• gh can be a throaty sound in careful pronunciation, but many learners approximate it with a normal g at first and are still understood

Swahili spelling is generally very regular, so once you know the sounds, reading becomes much easier.