Chapter 23 - Time

Tanzania and Kenya being located close to the equator, there are few variations during the year in the hours of sunrise and sunset. The sun rises around six o'clock in the morning and sets around six o'clock in the evening.

Therefore 7 o'clock in the morning is the first hour of the day, and seven o'clock in the evening is the first hour of the night : We may consider that there is a six hour shift between Western time and "Swahili" time..

However, while time is read and even written according to the Swahili system, the clocks are always set Western fashion... So one always has to add or substract mentally 6 hours, to read time correctly !

 1. THE HOUR : 

In Swahili, the word SAA (= hour) precedes the figure. Thus :

Reading the time over a 24 hour period is not common in Swahili. Therefore, to distinguish between the hours of the night and the hours of the day, we must use different expressions marking the moment of the day :

• "YA ASUBUHI" (= in the morning)
• "YA MCHANA" (= in the afternoon)
• "YA JIONI" (= in the evening)
• "YA USIKU" (= at night)

 2. SOME MINUTES PAST : 

The word "minute" is : DAKIKA. One will mention the additional minutes while counting as follows :

Saa moja...	na dakika tano	five past	...seven
	na dakika kumi	ten past
	na robo	quarter past
	na dakika shirini	twenty past

The word "quarter" is : ROBO.
The word "half" is : NUSU.

Saa tatu na robo	Quarter past three	(= 9 h 15)
Saa tatu u nusu	Half past three	(= 9 h 30)
Saa kumi na mbili u nusu	Half past twelve	(= 6 h 30)

Note that to add minutes and a quarter, we use the word NA (= and), while to add a half we use the word U (from the Arabic "WA" = and)

 3. SOME MINUTES TO : 

Past the half, we count the missing minutes to reach the following hour. We use the expressions :

KASORO DAKIKA ... = ... minutes to ; and KASOROBO = quarter to.

EXAMPLES :

 4. DIFFERENT PERIODS OF THE DAY AND OF THE NIGHT : 

Every 24 hour period can be divided as follows :

 5. PRAYER TIMES : 

In strongly islamized places such as Zanzibar, Lamu (an island north of kenya), etc., the five Muslim prayers give its rythm to the day and constitute for the local population temporal reference points, almost like "hours" :

VOCABULARY

EXERCISES

EXERCISE 1 : Translate into Swahili :

7 h 15, 6 h 30 in the evening, 2 h 10, noon, half past three, what time have you got ? Twenty-five to four, 17 h, five past one, nine o'clock, eight o'clock at night, three o'clock in the morning, sunset, evening, dawn.

EXERCISE 2 : Translate into English :

Alfajiri, alasiri, magharibi, asubuhi, mchana, usiku, jioni, saa tisa u nusu, saa tatu na dakika kumi, saa sita kasoro dakika tano, saa kumi na mbili ya usiku, saa saba kasorobo, saa tisa, saa tano na dakika kumi na mbili, saa saba kamili.