"She is a second child"

Translation: Yeye ni mwana wa pili

[deactivated user]

This course gets more and more disjointed as you progress ... This is mt first time seeing mwana, and it wasnt even introduced.

[brjaga]

What's the difference between mwana and mtoto?

[Ernst557459]

Good question! I thought that mwana meant 'son' (like in jina la baba, la mwana na roho takatifu, 'in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit': a sentence that will be repeated ad inifitum in later lessons). The subject 'she' seems to rule that out, in this case :)

[Vlad_Barti]

Could it be that "mwana" refers to adults who are nonetheless (someone's) children and "mtoto" to actual children?

[Martin633120]

Apparently, the male gender continues to be the default gender in Swahili, just as it was in English until recently when we began having to write him/her instead of him. Here, we know it's a girl they're telling about, but the statement places her in a general role - that of a second child. So for child, they use the default term mwana. They could as easily have written mtoto.

[Cynthia9th]

This makes no sense to me. I finally wrote in the answer required to move on to the next question, but this is wrong.

[blue-oranges]

Why is wa needed here but the a of association is not asked for with other numbers?

[Ernst557459]

Because 'second' is an ordinal number. So, watoto sita = six children, mtoto wa sita = the sixth child. Does that answer your question?

[Richie862187]

:#!?!!!