Greetings: Habari

You can spend a lot of quality greeting time with the word 'habari', which literally means 'news'.

Any question beginning with 'habari' basically means 'How are you?', or "What's your news?"

Examples include:

Habari yako / Habari zako?        What's your news?
Habari gani?                                 What kind of news (do you have)?
Habari za asubuhi?                      News of the morning?   [Good morning]
Habari za mchana?                      News of the afternoon? [Good afternoon]
Habari za jioni?                            News of the evening? [Good evening]
Habari za leo?                               News of today?     [Good day, hello]
Habari za kazi?                             News of work?      [How's work?]
Habari za safari?                          News of your journey?     [Did you have a good trip?]

A good answer to any 'habari' question is nzuri, meaning good or fine.  Other responses include:

nzuri sana       very good
salama             safe (but here it just means 'fine')
safi                    clean (again, it just means 'fine' when it's the answer to 'habari')
njema               great