"Wana chakula"

Translation: They have food

[jonathankosgei]

Cha-kula literally means thing-"to eat" and vya-kula things-"to eat". So food, foods.

[IndianaJBird]

Where's the food?

[Jan.de.ta]

I want food!

[AnnSj1]

Why so many repetetions? They same exercise sentence is repeated

[SarahConnor]

Whats the difference between "chakula" and "vyakula"?

[jonathankosgei]

Chakula means food, vyakula foods.

[freereflection]

I think that swahili just blurs the line between chakula/vyakula more than English does with food/foods. Each language tends emphasize certain words being mass vs. count nouns. "foods" is pretty rare in English and we often substitute words like "foodstuffs" or have constructions like "types of [noun]." As a result, using vyakula seems less intuitive to an English speaker, but is more common in Swahili.