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Learn Hardcore Swahili: Spishi hii ni mpya. - This species is new.

Hardcore Swahili
/Planning a monthly household budget
/Spishi hii ni mpya.

Spishi hii ni mpya.

Spishi hii ni mpya.

This species is new.

Breakdown of Spishi hii ni mpya.

Questions & Answers about Spishi hii ni mpya.

Why is hii placed after spishi instead of before it?

In Swahili, demonstratives such as this usually come after the noun, not before it as in English.

So:

spishi hii = this species

That noun + demonstrative order is very normal in Swahili.

What does ni do in this sentence?

Ni is the copula here, meaning is.

So the structure is:

spishi hii = this species
ni mpya = is new

A useful thing to remember is that ni does not change the way English am / is / are do. The same ni is used with different subjects in this kind of sentence.

Why is it hii and not huu, hiki, or another form of this?

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Swahili nouns belong to noun classes, and words that go with the noun must agree with its class.

Spishi is treated as a class 9 noun in the singular, so its matching form of this is hii.

For comparison:

class 1 singular: mtu huyu = this person
class 3 singular: mti huu = this tree
class 7 singular: kitabu hiki = this book
class 9 singular: spishi hii = this species

So hii is not random; it is the agreement form required by the noun class of spishi.

Why is the adjective mpya and not just pya?

The basic adjective stem is -pya, meaning new. In a sentence, that stem usually takes a class agreement prefix.

With class 9 and class 10 nouns, the adjective often gets an N- type prefix. Before p, that shows up as m, giving:

-pya → mpya

So:

spishi hii ni mpya = this species is new

This same form appears with many other class 9 or 10 nouns:

nyumba mpya = a new house
nguo mpya = new clothes

How would I say the plural, as in These species are new?

You would say:

Spishi hizi ni mpya.

A few things are happening there:

spishi often stays the same in singular and plural
hii changes to hizi for the plural
mpya stays mpya here

So the agreement words tell you the number more clearly than the noun itself does.

Why does spishi stay the same in the plural?

Many Swahili nouns in class 9 and 10, especially loanwords, have the same form in singular and plural.

So:

singular: spishi
plural: spishi

The surrounding agreement shows whether it is singular or plural:

spishi hii = this species
spishi hizi = these species

This is very common in Swahili, so learners should get used to relying on agreement words, not only on the noun form itself.

Is there a Swahili word here for the or a?

No. Swahili usually does not use articles like English the or a.

That means a noun such as spishi can often be understood from context as:

a species
the species
species

In this sentence, hii helps make it specific, so spishi hii clearly means this species.

How would I say this new species instead of this species is new?

You would remove ni and make new part of the noun phrase:

spishi hii mpya

That means this new species.

Compare:

spishi hii ni mpya = this species is new
spishi hii mpya = this new species

So ni is what turns it into a full sentence with is.

Is spishi a native Swahili word?

Spishi is a loanword, and it sounds fairly technical or scientific. It is the normal word for biological species.

In everyday conversation, people may sometimes use more general words such as aina, depending on context, but spishi is the precise word when you really mean species in a scientific sense.

How is Spishi hii ni mpya pronounced?

A simple approximation is:

SPEE-shee HEE-ee nee M-pyah

A few pronunciation notes:

sh sounds like English sh
hii has two vowel sounds, roughly hee-ee
mpya begins with a real m sound before pya, so do not reduce it to just pya

Swahili spelling is quite regular, so once you know the sound of each letter combination, pronunciation is usually straightforward.

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