asubuhi
noun
morning.
Names the morning as a time of day. You’ll hear it in Habari za asubuhi?, the greeting “How is your morning?”
Origins
Asubuhi carries a long journey inside an everyday morning word. It came into Swahili from Arabic الصُبْح (aṣ-ṣubḥ), “the morning,” and has been at home in the language since before the modern era. Even its opening as- preserves a trace of the Arabic article.
Sources3
Sergio Baldi, Dictionary of Arabic Loanwords in the Languages of Central and East Africa (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021), entry 1552, 174.
Records Swahili asubuhi under Arabic ṣubḥ, “dawn; morning.”
Haspelmath and Tadmor / Lexibank, World Loanword Database CLDF (Max Planck Institute / Lexibank, 2009), wold-master/cldf/forms.csv row 43351.
Classifies asubuhi as a clearly borrowed word already present in pre-modern Swahili.
Charles Sacleux, Grammaire des dialectes Swahilis (Paris: Procure des Pères du Saint-Esprit, 1909), 62.
Identifies asubuhi as an Arabic borrowing and explains the article assimilation visible in its opening as-.
Examples
Asubuhi imefika.
Morning has arrived.
Ninaondoka asubuhi.
I am leaving in the morning.
Tutakutana kesho asubuhi.
We will meet tomorrow morning.
Kila asubuhi anakunywa chai.
Every morning they drink tea.
Asubuhi kuna baridi.
It is cold in the morning.
Leo asubuhi tuna safari.
We have a journey this morning.
Alifika mapema asubuhi.
They arrived early in the morning.
Ofisi inafunguliwa asubuhi.
The office opens in the morning.
Napenda kutembea asubuhi.
I like to walk in the morning.
