Mogadishu (Banaadir)

Level: Beginner Audience: Family / all ages (ideal for young children) Geo: Somalia -> Mogadishu (standard Somali as taught in schools and heard in Bakaara Market when prices are called out)

Somali numbers are short and rhythmic, which makes them easy to chant on a walk, while skipping, or while counting mangoes at the market. Say each number with the stress where the accent is shown; double letters are held slightly longer.

The numbers

Somali	English	Notes
Kow	One	Kow is the counting form. Hal is used before a noun (one thing) and mid when "one" stands alone.
Laba	Two	Also heard as labo.
Saddex	Three	The dd is held; the x is the throat sound, like a strong H.
Afar	Four
Shan	Five
Lix	Six	Ends in the throat sound x, not an English "x".
Toddoba	Seven	Also written toddobo.
Siddeed	Eight	Also written sideed; the ee is long.
Sagaal	Nine	Long aa.
Toban	Ten

[Audio: a child and a grandparent counting from kow to toban together, slowly and then quickly]

Counting things

In Somali the number usually comes after the noun it counts, and hal is used for "one" with a noun. A few market examples using words from the greetings module:

Somali	English	Notes
Saaxiib	(one) friend	Singular noun.
Saaxiibbo	friends	Plural.
Biyo	water

[Image: sacks of grain and baskets of fruit at Bakaara Market with hand-written price boards]

Try it at home

1. Count the stairs: kow, laba, saddex, afar, shan...
2. Clap once for each number, then say the numbers backwards from toban to kow.
3. Count the people at the table and tell Hooyo or Aabe the total in Somali.

Numerals and their variant spellings are taken from Omniglot: Numbers in Somali and Wikivoyage: Somali phrasebook (accessed 2026-10-04). Sentence-building beyond the examples above is deliberately left for the Intermediate module.

Level: Beginner Audience: Family / all ages Geo: Somalia -> Mogadishu (Somali is the official and national language of Somalia, written in a Latin alphabet since 1972; it is spoken by Somalis everywhere, so these greetings work in Xamar, Hargeisa, Nairobi's Eastleigh or a kitchen in Minneapolis)

Somali spelling looks unusual at first but is very regular. Three letters matter most for a learner: x is a breathy sound made deep in the throat (so Xamar sounds like "Hamar" with a strong H), c is a soft throat sound with no English equivalent (in Cali it is almost silent to an English ear), and dh is a "d" made with the tongue curled back. Double vowels are long (maya, "no", is short; waan, "I", is long), and doubled consonants are held a little longer. Many greetings are shared with Arabic because of Islam, and Salaam alaykum is heard everywhere.

Greeting someone

Somali	English	Notes
Salaam alaykum	Peace be upon you (hello)	The universal greeting. Reply: Wa alaykum salaam.
Iska warran?	How are you? (literally "tell me your news")	The everyday Somali greeting among family and friends. Also Ii warran?
Nabad miyaa? / Ma nabad baa?	Is it peace? (how are you?)	Nabad means "peace" and is the word at the heart of Somali greetings. Reply: Waa nabad ("it is peace").
Sidee tahay? / Setahay?	How are you?	A slightly more neutral form.
Waan fiicanahay	I am fine / well	A common reply. Also Waan wanaagsanahay, or Alhamdulillah, waan iska fiicanahay ("thanks be to God, I am fine").
Subax wanaagsan	Good morning	Wanaagsan means "good".
Galab wanaagsan	Good afternoon
Fiid wanaagsan	Good evening
Habeen wanaagsan	Good night
Soo dhowow	Welcome	Said to a guest at the door. Also spelled soo dhawoow.
Nabadgelyo / Nabadeey	Goodbye (literally "go in peace")	Also spelled nabad gelyo.

[Audio: a Mogadishu parent or grandparent recording each greeting and its reply]

Courtesy words a child should know

Somali	English	Notes
Mahadsanid	Thank you	Reply: Adaa mudan / Adigaa mudan ("you deserve it", i.e. you are welcome).
Fadlan	Please
Haa / Maya	Yes / No
Iga raali ahow	Excuse me / forgive me	Used to get attention politely or to apologise.
Waan ka xumahay	I am sorry	For sympathy or regret.
Magacaygu waa ...	My name is ...	Question: Magacaa? ("your name?").
Maan fahmin	I did not understand	Useful for a child who is still learning.

[Audio: the courtesy words, said slowly and then at normal speed]

Family words for the dinner table

Somali	English	Notes
Hooyo	Mother	Children address their mother as Hooyo; it is also used affectionately by a mother to her child.
Aabe	Father	Also spelled aabbe.
Saaxiib	Friend	Plural saaxiibbo.
Biyo	Water
Nabad	Peace	The word inside most greetings and farewells.

[Image: a family at the door of a whitewashed Hamar Weyne house greeting a visitor with Soo dhowow]

Try it at home

1. Guest at the door: Salaam alaykum. Child: Wa alaykum salaam, soo dhowow!
2. Iska warran? -- Waan fiicanahay, mahadsanid. Adiguna? (and you?)
3. Bedtime: Habeen wanaagsan, Hooyo. -- Habeen wanaagsan.

Only well-attested standard Somali phrases are listed (Omniglot: Useful Somali phrases; Wikivoyage: Somali phrasebook; Wiktionary entries for hooyo, aabbe, biyo and saaxiib, all accessed 2026-10-04). Spellings follow the standard orthography; regional and dialect forms, including the Benadiri speech of Mogadishu's old town, may differ slightly.

Abshir wanted to be a footballer. He practised on the flat roof of the family's house in the Hodan district every evening, kicking a ball against the parapet while the sky over Mogadishu turned orange and then purple, and the sound of the sea came faintly through the traffic.

His grandfather came up to the roof every evening too, but not for football. He sat on a mat with a cup of tea and looked at the sky, and his lips moved. Sometimes words came out, low and rolling, in lines that seemed to go on for ever.

"What are you saying?" Abshir asked one evening, out of breath.

"A gabay," said Grandfather. "A poem. My father taught it to me on a roof very like this one, when I was younger than you."

"Is it written down somewhere?"

"It is written down here." Grandfather tapped his forehead. "And now a little of it is written down in you, because you have heard it."

Abshir sat down on the warm concrete anyway, because the ball had rolled away.

"In our country," Grandfather said, "poets were as famous as footballers are now. People remembered thousands of lines. A good poem could travel from one end of Somalia to the other without anyone writing it down, just from mouth to ear, mouth to ear."

"That sounds hard."

"It has rules that make it easier. Listen." Grandfather recited a line slowly, and Abshir heard it: many of the words began with the same sound. "Every line of a poem must share one letter. If I choose the letter S, then every line must have S-words in it. It is like a key that helps your memory open the next line."

"Every line? For the whole poem?"

"Every line."

Abshir thought this was impossible, and said so. Grandfather only smiled and asked, "What do you call a friend?"

"Saaxiib," said Abshir, surprising himself. His mother said it every Friday: "Are your friends coming to the beach?"

"And morning?"

"Subax."

"Both begin with S. You already have two, and you can count your friends too: saddex, three of them. Make me a poem about a morning at the sea with your friends, with the letter S. Just four lines."

Abshir groaned, but the ball was still lost. He thought about Lido Beach on a Friday subax, the water cold around his ankles, his three saaxiibbo playing football on the sand, the boats far out. He tried a line, and it was terrible, and Grandfather laughed, and then Abshir laughed, and tried another.

By the time the stars came out he had four lines. They were not beautiful. But every line had its S-words, and when he said them in order he found that he could not forget them even if he wanted to. The sounds held hands and pulled each other along.

"You see?" said Grandfather. "The letter is the key."

The next week Abshir's cousin Sagal came from London for the holidays. She spoke Somali slowly and shyly, and she had never been to Mogadishu before. On the first evening she sat on the roof looking lost while the adults talked downstairs.

Abshir sat beside her. "Do you want to hear a poem?" he said. "I made it. It is about a morning at the sea. Every line has an S in it."

He recited his four clumsy lines about the subax and the saaxiibbo and the sand. Sagal listened. Then she asked him to say them again, and the third time she said two of the lines with him, and the two cousins started building a fifth line together, arguing about which S-words were allowed.

From the stairs, Grandfather watched and said nothing.

Later he told them what his own father had told him: "A football can be lost. A poem you have learned by heart goes everywhere you go."

Abshir still wanted to be a footballer. But he kept the poem, and the next one, and the one after that, and when he was very old and sat on a roof with a cup of tea, his lips moved in the evening too.

Hodan was eight years old and she did not like waiting for anything. She did not like waiting for the bread to come out of the oven, or for her little brother to finish his sentences, or for the bajaj to crawl through the traffic by Bakaara Market. "Hurry, hurry," her mother laughed, "you were born in a hurry."

Her grandfather lived in the old town of Hamar Weyne, in a white house with a wooden door so old that the carvings had gone soft. Every Friday Hodan walked with him down the narrow lanes, past the little mosques and the women selling sesame sweets, to the old harbour where the lighthouse stands with the sea beating at its feet.

There, pulled up on the sand, was a boat unlike the fibreglass fishing boats bobbing in the water. It was made of wood, long and curved like a leaf, with a single tall mast and no sail on it.

"That is a dhow," said Grandfather. "When I was your age, boats like this came and went from this harbour with dates and cloth and dried fish. They sailed all the way to Arabia and India and back."

"Can we sail it?" said Hodan at once. "Today? Now?"

Grandfather sat down slowly on an upturned crate. "Not today."

"Why not? The sea is right there."

"Because the wind is not right there." He pointed out past the lighthouse to where the sky met the water. "A dhow does not have an engine, Hodan. It has a sail and a sailor who knows the seasons. For half the year the wind blows one way, down the coast. For the other half it turns around and blows back. The old sailors waited months in port for the wind to change. Then they went."

Hodan frowned at the horizon as if she could make the wind hurry up. Nothing happened.

"That is a very slow way to travel," she said.

"It is the only way the sea allows," said Grandfather.

Every Friday after that, Hodan went back to the dhow. The man who owned it, a boat-builder named Cali with grey in his beard, was slowly fixing it. One week he was oiling the planks. The next he was sewing a huge triangle of cloth that would be the sail. Hodan learned to hold the rope steady while he worked, and to pass him the right tool before he asked for it.

"You are getting good at waiting," Cali told her.

"I am not waiting," said Hodan. "I am helping." But she thought about it on the way home, and she was not sure there was a difference.

Then one Friday morning Grandfather woke her early. "Come and look at the palm trees," he said. Their leaves were all leaning the other way. Even the smell of the air was different.

At the harbour, Cali already had the sail up. It filled with a snap like a sheet on a washing line, and the whole dhow seemed to lean forward, eager.

"Now we go," said Cali. "Just along the coast and back. The wind has turned."

Hodan sat in the front with the spray on her face and the white city sliding past, the lighthouse, the minarets, the beach where the football games were starting. The boat did not roar. It hissed softly through the water, pushed by nothing but air that had taken all season to arrive.

Grandfather had a saying for that morning: "The wind does not come because you shout at it. It comes because it is time."

Hodan still hurried through most of her days. But whenever something would not go faster no matter how hard she pushed, she thought of the dhow on the sand, and of the sail that could only fill when the season was right, and she found that she could wait, and work while she waited, and that the two were not so different after all.