When to use it
Use it at an airport to ask staff to help you find your boarding gate.
“Can you help me find my gate?” · The sentence in English
In “Can you help me find my gate?” ‘help me find’ drops ‘to’, and ‘my’ precedes the noun unchanged.
- Can
- auxiliary verbcan · tense: present · modal verb of ability or permission; it opens the question
- you
- pronounpersonal pronoun
- help
- verbhelp · form: base form (infinitive without "to") · main verb after "can"
- me
- pronounobject pronoun
- find
- verbfind · form: base form (infinitive without "to") · main verb after a modal or after "help me"
- my
- determinerpossessive determiner
- gate
- nounnoun; the boarding gate at an airport
“Unaweza kunisaidia kutafuta geti langu?” · The sentence in Swahili
In “Unaweza kunisaidia kutafuta geti langu?” the person helped is inside the verb: ‘-ni-’ (me) in ‘kunisaidia’. ‘langu’ (my) starts with ‘l-’ because ‘geti’ (gate) is in the LI-YA class, and it follows the noun.
- Unaweza
- auxiliary verbweza · person: 2nd singular · tense: present (-na-) · u- (you) + -na- + weza 'can'
- kunisaidia
- verbsaidia · form: infinitive (ku-) · ku- + -ni- (me) + saidia 'help': help me
- kutafuta
- verbtafuta · form: infinitive (ku-) · ku- + tafuta 'to look for'
- geti
- noun'gate', from English; LI-YA class
- langu
- pronoun'my', l- agreeing with geti
What changes from one language to the other · English × Swahili
English ‘me’ is a separate word; Swahili builds it into the verb. English has one ‘my’; Swahili changes it by noun class.
Example conversation
— Unaweza kunisaidia kutafuta geti langu?
— Can you help me find my gate?
— Bila shaka, naomba kuona pasi yako ya kupanda.
— Of course, may I see your boarding pass?