m/a class nouns
To start with, here are some words from the m/a class, the person class:| mulume | man, husband |
| muche | woman, wife |
| musichana | girl, daughter |
| mwana | son |
| muzhazi | parent |
| mutsedza | father-in-law (of man) or mother-in-law (of man) |
| alume | men, husbands |
| ache | women, wives |
| wana | sons |
| azhazi | parents |
N class nouns
The words for some other relatives are N-class nouns. These nouns may start with a nasal sound, like mboga, vegetables or nyumba, house. Or they may be entirely lacking the `noun prefix', like baba, which means father.| baba | father |
| m'ama | mother |
| ndugu | sibling |
| bizhala | father-in-law (of woman) |
| mizhala | mother-in-law (of woman) |
| h'awe | grandmother |
The plurals of these nouns are the same as the singular forms:
| baba | fathers |
| m'ama | mothers |
| ndugu | siblings |
| bizhala | fathers-in-law (of women) |
| mizhala | mothers-in-law (of women) |
| h'awe | grandmothers |
Example sentences
Since these words are (we hope!) all referring to people, you use the normal subject concords we've learned already to talk about them.Translate the following sentences to English:
My relatives
We will look more at how to say my in the next post. For now, you just need to know that wangu, yangu and zangu all mean 'my'.
Baba yangu a nyumbani My father is at the house.
