"His brothers are teachers"
Translation:Kaka zake ni walimu
6 Comments
1137
Some plural forms for addressing people keep the same.
From KU (University of Kansas):
baba/baba [father/fathers]
babu/babu [grandfather/grandfathers]
dada/dada [sister/sisters]
kaka/kaka [brother/brothers]
mama/mama [mother/mothers]
See in the link below, Other nouns of people:
https://www2.ku.edu/~kiswahili/pdfs/Lesson_09.pdf
Here, there is also the word "babu/mababu" but in the ji/ma class:
http://www.africa.uga.edu/Kiswahili/doe/kikogrammary2.html
The same for "bibi/mabibi" (grandmother/grandmothers) in Wiktionary:
- 1842
My question was about the fact that it's kaka zake instead of kaka wake. Animate nouns, like animals, usually get I/II agreement on adjectives, possessives, and verbs, even if they form plurals like a different class.
- 1137
I understand, and sorry if I do not remember well the grammar notes. I try to repeat lessons and share some information. This is from the notes (People):
For the M- WA- noun class, the prefix w- is used for both singular AND plural possessive pronouns. For example, my child will be mtoto wangu and my children will be watoto wangu.
Note: The exceptions to this rule are certain kinship nouns that come from Arabic: baba, mama, bibi, babu, shangazi, binamu, rafiki, dada, kaka, etc. These nouns take the y- agreement in the singular and the z- agreement in the plural.
Accordingly, my sister will be dada yangu whereas my sisters will be dada zangu.
Thanks for the explanation but I am not sure 'baba' came from Arabic since it is the same in many Bantu languages which had no Arabic influence like Ndau = baba, Zulu, Ndebele = ubaba
