bei

noun

price.

Use bei when asking what something costs: Bei gani? means What’s the price?

Origins

Bei entered Swahili from Arabic بَيْع (bayʿ, “sale”).

Sources6

Cashewnut Board of Tanzania, MAMCU wauza kilo 35,445,155 kwa bei ya juu Sh. 2,510 (2025-11-12), Opening paragraph.
Bei ya juu and bei ya chini describe the high and low ends of a price range.
Sergio Baldi, Dictionary of Arabic Loanwords in the Languages of Central and East Africa (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021), entry 348a, printed 44.
Records Arabic baiʿ, sale, and Swahili bei.
Haspelmath and Tadmor / Lexibank, World Loanword Database CLDF (2009), wold-master/raw/db/unit.csv row 50875; wold-master/cldf/forms.csv row 36545.
The price of something.; Bei is a noun in classes 9/10.; Bei means price.
University of Kansas Kiswahili Glossary
The price of something.
Grammaire des dialectes Swahilis
Bei gani? means What price?; Bei comes from Arabic.
Kais Dukes, Quranic Arabic Corpus: dictionary (University of Leeds), 24:37:6.
Attests Arabic بَيْع, sale; supports the donor spelling, not the Swahili borrowing route.