"habari za asubuhi dada?"
Translation:How is the morning sister?
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I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I suspect he means in other languages, but there seem to be a lot of words associated with females in this list:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dada
They all seem to be traceable back to Persian though.
I also find this interesting:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%93%E1%83%94%E1%83%93%E1%83%90#Georgian "deda" (mother)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%83%9B%E1%83%90%E1%83%9B%E1%83%90#Georgian "mama" (father)
right? literally imagine getting that one mixed up to a native speaker hahaha
Etymology (asubuhi)
From Arabic الصُبْح (aṣ-ṣubḥ, “the morning”).
Pronunciation
IPA: /ɑ.suˈɓu.hi/
Noun
asubuhi (n class, plural asubuhi)
morning
From Wiktionary:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/asubuhi
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Swahili_n_class_nouns
1061
Yes "za" is used for plurals. The sentence literally translates to, "news of morning sister". There is no "a/an" or "the" in Swahili.
1061
As in news. Normally in English, news is uncountable. You will have to use something like "a piece of news " or "a news item " if you really wanted to "count" . "za" is qualifying "habari" and not "dada". I hope that helps.