"Good morning grandmother?"
Translation:Habari za asubuhi bibi?
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not at all (nothing in Swahili is gendered), the prefix of '-a' following a noun is completely dependent of that noun, and is governed by noun classes.
Usually for the noun class 'I/Zi', 'ya' is singular and 'za' is plural i.e.
Nyumba ya
mwalimu (a teacher's house) - nyumba za
walimu (teachers' houses)
In this case, 'habari ya' and 'habari za' are interchangeable since 'habari' is 'news' which technically isn't countable
The depth with which Duolingo covers noun classes is definitely lacking, and honestly even when I was formally learning the language as a kid, understanding noun classes was a pivotal point in my learning
Re: nothing in Swahili is gendered - this depends on your notion of Gender. You are right if you think of "gender" in terms of masculine vs. feminine (or male vs. female). However, from very early on Bantu linguists have conceived of noun class distinctions as gender disctinctions. I quote:
... Bantu languages may be termed class gender languages. (Clement M. Doke, Bantu linguistic terminology sv. GENDER, 1935).
With this in mind you might even argue that everything in Swahili is gendered!
Actually from my understanding when we meet someone in the morning we ask for his status: habari means news so we ask him: (how are) the news of the morning (your news..this morning). That explains why it is a question. Once we end the conversation we wish the person a good morning and we tell him: Asubuhi njema (wishing you "a good morning").
It depends where. In Kenya, this is generally more common:
bibi = wife
nyanya = grandmother
Whereas in Tanzania, it's generally:
bibi = grandmother
mke = wife
nyanya = tomato
Just a generalisation though. Most people who speak Swahili speak it as a second language, and among native speakers, there are pretty diverse dialects.
2401
Why does the English sentence end with a question mark if it is not a question? Shouldn't the English version BE a question?