#JAMBO BWANA ORIGINAL MOVIE#
This phrase was made popular in the song “Hakuna Matata” here in the Disney movie The Lion King, but let’s take a look at its grammatical basis. There are only two examples of verb constructions in this song. Verbs in Swahili are complex constructions of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes (collectively called “affixes”) built around a main Radical, making Swahili an “agglutinative” language, like Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Uralic languages (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian), Quechua and Aymara. “Nchi yenye amani” : “Country with peace” (Similar to ya, yenye is a possessive pronoun meaning “with” and is the form of the root -enye specifically for noun classes 4, 6, and 9) In this case, nchi “country” is a Class 9 Noun, so it takes the ya form of – a.) “Nchi ya maajabu” : “Country of wonders” ( ya means “of” it is a possessive concord, also called associate marker, and the form of the root -a specifically for noun classes 4, 6, and 9. “Nchi nzuri” : “Good country” ( nzuri means “good, beautiful” and is the form of the adjective root – zuri specifically for Noun classes 9 and 10 Because the singular nchi “country” is of Noun Class 9, it takes the nzuri form of – zuri) “Watu wote” : “All people” (wote means “all, every”, but is the form of the word “-ote” specifically for Noun classes 2 and 11 in this case, the Noun watu means “people” and belongs to class 2) “Kenya yetu” : “Our Kenya” ( yetu means “our”, but is the form of the word “-etu” specifically for Noun classes 4, 6, 9) Here are examples of Nouns with Adjectives in this song: Essentially the noun classes function to create Harmony and Sense in the language, as the class of the noun determines prefixing for the noun and its adjectives and other qualifiers. In the Vocabulary and Etymology section, I have listed the main nouns in this song, along with their appropriate noun class. *as you can see with “tunda” (singular “fruit”), there are exceptions in the
KI/VI (7/8) Animals, objects kiti/viti (“chair/chairs”) JI/MA (5/6) Fruits, objects tunda*/matunda (“fruit/fruits”) M/MI (3/4) Nature,activity mti/miti (“tree/trees”) M/WA (1/2) Humans mtu/watu (“person/people”) Here is short simplifcation of the first 10 classes, which are the most logical and regular to begin with: Depending on the Class (which is based traditionally on Semantics or meaning), a noun and its adjectives will take a certain prefix which identifiies the class and whether it is singular or plural. There are 13 so-called Nominal classes, and 3 Locative classes, each usually given a number from 1 to 16 for organization purposes. Swahili has a rather complex system of Noun Classes. “Good afternoon” (“News of the afternoon) “Good morning” (Literally, “news of the morning”) However there are daily greetings which also used “Habari”: The “Habari” greeting, “Habari gani?” (“What kind of news?” or more typically “How are things?”) is usually answered with “Nzuri” (“good”) or “Nzuri sana” (“Very good”). (“Not much.” literally, “(I have) no matters.”) Hujambo? (“What’s up?” literally, “(you have) no matters?”)ī. There are other forms of the “Jambo” greeting. Habari gani? (“How are you?” literally “What kind of news?”) This song contains in the chorus a very simple, common exchange in Swahili, with the very rough equivalents in English and their literal translations:ī. Mtu – (noun, 1/2) person, someone plural form is watu “people, population” Karibu – (phrase) “welcome”, “come in”, like いらっしゃいませ (irasshaimase) in Japanese also related to the adverb for “nearby” or “soon”ġ0. Geni – (adjective) strange, unusual, foreign noun forms (1/2) are singular mgeni, plural wageniĦ. Matata – (plural noun, 6) problems from verb tata, “to tangle”ĥ. Habari – (noun, 9/10) news, information from Arabic خبر (“habar, khabar”) meaning “news, information”, as in مرحبا (“marhaba”, or “welcome”), which is related to greetings in Kiswahili “Habari gani” (“what kind of news?”) and Bahasa Melayu “Apa Khabar” (“what news?”)Ĥ. Bwana – (noun, 5/6) mister, sir, man, waiterģ. Jambo – (noun, 5/6) matter, affair, thiing, businessĢ. There are no problems, there are no problemsġ. Kenya, good country, there are no problemsĬountry with peace, there are no problems “Greetings, Sir” (Translation by ORS, 2010)
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