Noun Classes: the Cornerstone of Swahili Grammar

The hardest part of Swahili is the noun classes.

Noun classes are unique to African Bantu languages.

In some ways, Bantu noun classes are like genders in German, French or Arabic. Similar to those languages, gender affects gender, verb conjugation, and some other particles.

However, unlike those languages, which just have two grammatical genders, Swahili has over eighteen noun classes, with seven in very frequent use.

The precise number isn’t important (and there’s some debate), but you’ll definitely encounter seven noun classes very often.

It’s tempting to try to ignore Swahili noun classes, because they’re hard, and you can make yourself understood even if you get them wrong. But even if you do ignore them, you have to learn to recognise them.

For example, you have to know that wangu, yangu and langu all mean “my”, just for different nouns. Once you know that, you can learn them; after that, you can get them ‘wrong’ as you wish.

Similarly, you have to know that the words kizuri, nzuri and pazuri are all the same word: “nice”. They just describe nouns in different classes.

It’s important to recognise words affected by noun classes because Swahili is a language with many words that sound the same. Like for example: Mbega na mbogo wanakula mboga kwenye mbuga translates to “The monkey and the buffalo eat vegetables on the grasslands.” In a language with so many similar words, it’s important to know which are the same (by looking at their form) and which are actually different words.

On the following page is a summary table of noun classes, which will be explained in the next sections.

Noun class summary table: (using these is explained in the next sections)

There are other classes not mentioned here, including u-zi, and ya-ya, i-i and u-u. But they’re used relatively infrequently. In the first year of speaking Swahili, you’re unlikely to come across them more than a handful of times, and so I consider them out of scope for a learner’s grammar guide.

If you’re interested in an advanced grammar guide, I recommend the textbook Swahili: A Foundation for Speaking, Reading, and Writing - Second Edition 2nd Edition, by Thomas J. Hinnebusch and Sarah M. Mirza, available on Amazon.

How to figure out: “What class does the noun belong to?”

The first column of the table gives example nouns in each class. For example, in the a/wa class, the example is mtu (a person) or watu (people).

Before you can modify verbs and adjectives, you need to figure out what class the noun belongs to. If you hear a new word, there are some ways of guessing with relatively good confidence.

Here’s a quick guide to guessing Swahili noun classes:

“The big bottle”, “The small bananas”: Making adjectives

Shortcut: You make the first letter of the adjective the same as the first letter of the word, except I/Zi-class or Li (singular of Li-Ya).

After identifying what class the noun belongs to, you can apply an adjective.

In Swahili, nearly all adjectives come after the noun.

For example, -zuri, which means “good” or “beautiful”, becomes mtu mzuri (good person) or watu wazuri (good people).

For each class, there’s a different prefix for adjectives.

• For most common classes, the prefix of the noun is also the prefix for adjectives. E.g. in the example above, the prefixes ‘m’ and ‘wa’ are the same for the noun and adjective.
• For all animate nouns (people and animals), use m/wa prefixes.

These are the adjective prefixes you’re likely to encounter.

“I”, “You” or “It” in Verbs: Subject Prefixes

Shortcut: This is usually one of the following:

These are the prefixes that you attach to the beginning of a verb.

For all animated objects, this is “A/wa” class. Mostly, animate objects are the items doing things, e.g. the man is coming here. So in nearly all cases, it will be a or wa.

There are a few things that “do” things other than people or animals, and they’re usually man-made objects like airplanes. Those are usually I/Zi-class, and for those, the prefix is i- or z-.

Examples of subject prefixes in verbs with example sentences:

This “of” that: Belonging

The way you make sentences like “Said’s son” is a bit like the way you do it in French or Spanish, using a connector like “de” in those languages.

But this word changes depending on the first noun.

“Of” is -a. The possessive prefix attaches to it.

Rules

• Rearrange “Said’s son” to “the son of Said”
• Find out the class of “son” (mtoto, which is a/wa noun)
• Find possessive prefix (it’s w-)
• Answer: mtoto wa Said

These are the possessives you’re most likely to encounter. The other classes are less common.

Examples of possessive w- in action:

“Mine” vs “Yours’: Possessives

Possessives are how you build words like “mine” and “your”.

They come in two parts: a prefix and the possessive suffix.

Possessive prefixes: These are the same as the possessive markers above, just without the ‘a’.

Possessive suffixes:

To say “This is my friend”, you construct the possessive for friend (rafiki, M/Tu class), which is w, with the possessive suffix, which is -angu, to get wangu. Translation: Huyu ni rafiki wangu.

Examples of possessives:

“My dad”, “your friend”: Short form possessives for relatives and friends

You can abbreviate the above possessives for relatives and friends (words like rafiki, baba, mama, dada, kaka etc.).

• Put a suffix (see table below) to indicate ownership. Eliminate duplicate vowels.
• Usually, these are just done in “my”, “your” and “his/her’.

This just happens for a fixed group of nouns. Here they are. I’ve put emphasis on the ones that are irregular.

“Some”, “Any” and “All”: Quantity modifiers -ote and -o-ote

These words are common. In Swahili, they have to agree with the noun class, using the referential concord, combined with the adjective concord.

Here’s how you form any or all

Modifiers for the most common noun classes:

Examples of the quantity modifiers:

“Having” - the -enye particle

This particle means “having” or sometimes “becoming”. It takes the verb prefix for the thing being referred to. More than 90% of the time, it’s seen as kwenye, meaning “at” (a colloquial form of ku-enye, where the ku- references a location).

Examples of the “having” -enye particle: