Somali is an agglutinative language, using many affixes and particles to determine and alter the meaning of words.
The k or t is the actual article marker, although it can change depending on the preceding consonant, with the following vowel determined by the case of the noun.
If the subject of the sentence includes multiple nouns, only the last takes the nominative ending for the article.
If there is no article, a tonal change signifies nominative case, although this is not represented in the orthography.
Feminine nouns ending in a consonant take the suffix -i in nominative case without an article.
Some feminine nouns take an ending, -eed, -aad or -od, depending on the final consonant of the root word.
Somali personal pronouns exhibit separate clitic and emphatic forms.
The infinitive is created through the suffix -i or -n depending on verb class, e.g. keeni (to bring) and siin (to give).
Is it used to describe actions in the past which happened over a period of time: Intuu 'akhrinayey' wargeyska wuu 'quracanayey' = While he was reading the newspaper, he was eating breakfast.
Each of these focus particles can also be suffixed with the masculine and feminine clitics uu and ay.
Example: Thus, the words baa, ayaa, and waxaa unconsciously raise the question of "Who went out?
This sort of abundance of gender marking is common and often obligatory in Somali.
Nouns have different tonal markings for number, gender (masculine and feminine), and case or role in the sentence.