"Jina lake ni Emilian."
Translation:His name is Emilian.
February 21, 2017
49 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
This discussion is locked.
ngwarai
1025
As far as I know, in Swahili nouns and pronouns do not have gender so there is no way you can tell the gender. In the case of our example sentence you will only know from the name of the person that they are male or female.
Just a note for the "hover over" guidance for Kiswahili "lake": It states English "his, her, hers". For "lake" these all are singular possessive pronouns with regard to the "owner" = "he, she" as well as with regard to the noun owned which is of the JI/MA noun class (like "jina"). "his, her" from the hint are possessive pronouns and "his, hers" are substantival possessive pronouns (in English:... is his, ... is hers). I'm not familiar with the rules for the direct translation of the latter into Kiswahili. (8-Jul-2018)