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  3. Nomino
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  4. U

Swahili nouns (nomino) translated into English (U)

Nouns are the first thing that comes to our mind when think of parts of speech, probably because they serve for naming, well, things. In Swahili, nouns are called nomino, which has a lot to do with English nominal (originally from Greek /onoma/) which means name or noun.

The most difficult thing for a non-Bantu speaker learning Swahili is to understand that Swahili nouns belong to one of the noun classes. These are interesting from the point of view of linguistics and anthropology, since "grouping nouns together as members of a class hints at a system of cognitive or cultural classification underlying the system of linguistic classification"

There are many nouns in Swahili, so we have divided the list by the first letter so you can browse through them gradually and learn them in order:

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U