"Are you traveling?"
Translation:Unasafiri?
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Unasafi
ri.
The verb is kusafiri "to travel" and the noun is safari "a trip, journey".
These are loanwords from Arabic and Arabic has a pretty complicated system of deriving words from each other not by just adding prefixes or suffixes but by changing (or adding/subtracting) the vowels between three consonants, as well as using prefixes and suffixes. You'll see a lot of Arabic loanwords in Swahili that have different vowels. This is a good example. Here's another.
w
iz
ar
a = ministry
w
az
ir
i = minister
And quite a big family of words comes from the Arabic root k-t-b which has to do with writing. Here are some examples.
k
it
ab
u = book (the Arabic is kitab, with the plural being kutub, but in Swahili, the plural is formed the Bantu way: vitabu)
makt
ab
a = library
k
at
ib
a = text; constitution; declaration
k
at
ib
u = clerk, secretary
mk
at
ab
a = contract
So, basically, sometimes you might notice funny changes in the vowels in related words and if that happens, you're probably dealing with loans from Arabic.