Asking questions

Question words usually come at the end of a sentence in Swahili (with the exception of 'kwa nini', why, which is always at the beginning.)

1)  NINI?   (what)

Unafanya nini?       What are you doing?
Ninafanya kazi.      I am working.

2)  NANI?  (who)

Jina lako ni nani?    What is your name?  (literally 'who is your name'?)
Jina langu ni Amina.   My name is Amina.

3)  WAPI?   (where)

Unatoka wapi?    Where do you come from?
Ninatoka Uganda.   I come from Uganda.

4) VIPI?  (how)

Vipi hali?     How are you (literally 'how is your state'?)
Nzuri sana.   Very well.

5)  GANI?  (what kind of)

Unafanya kazi gani?     What (kind of work) do you do?
Mimi ni mwalimu.         I'm a teacher.

6) KWA NINI?  (why)

Kwa nini unasoma Kiswahili?    Why are you learning Swahili?
Kwa sababu ninataka kuishi Tanzania.      Because I want to live in Tanzania.

7)  -NGAPI?  (how much, how many)

Ni shillingi ngapi?     How much is it?  (literally 'how many shillings is it?')
Shillingi elfu tano.     5000 shillings.

Ngapi is the only question word which changes form to agree with the class of the noun it describes. So you would ask 'watoto wangapi?' (how many children) or 'miaka mingapi?' (how many years). Don't worry about this for now, and just use 'ngapi' until you learn the correct form with each noun class.

8)  .......JE?    (how)

Unlike the other question words, 'je' is used as an affix of a verb, for example:

Unasemaje?    How do you say it?
(people often say this if they didn't hear you, in the sense of 'what did you say?)

Unajuaje?     How do you know?

Because the stress is (almost) always on the penultimate syllable of a word, this means that unajua becomes unajuaje, with the stress on the 'a' rather than the 'u'.