huyo / hao

These are called "medial" or "referential" demonstratives. They have two main jobs in Swahili:

1. Physical Location: Pointing to a person or animal that is physically close to the listener, but far from the speaker.
2. The "Referential" Use: Pointing back to a person or animal you were just talking about. Because Swahili has No Articles (no word for "the"), huyo and hao are frequently used to mean "the person/animal in question" or "the aforementioned."

Important Rules:

• Position: They normally come after the noun they describe (Demonstratives After the Noun) to track active topics, though they can appear before the noun for strong definiteness, emphasis, or to reintroduce an inactive or semi-active topic.
• The Animacy Rule: Because of Human Agreement Across Classes, you generally use huyo and hao for all humans and animals. For example, mbwa (dog) is a Class 9 noun, but because it is an animal, Standard Swahili requires mbwa huyo (that dog). However, in colloquial and regional Swahili (especially in Kenya), the animacy rule is sometimes dropped for animals, allowing the use of the noun's default class demonstrative (e.g., mbwa hiyo).
• The "-o" of Reference: Notice how the near demonstratives huyu and hawa change to become huyo and hao. For huyu, the final vowel changes to an -o (huyo). For hawa, the w is dropped and the final vowel changes to an -o (hao). This -o suffix is a common marker of reference in Swahili.

Do not confuse these with Class 1 and 2 Far Demonstratives, which mean "that/those over there" (far from both the speaker and the listener).

The Class Names:
Classes 1 and 2 are commonly called M/WA, after nouns such as mtoto/watoto (child/children). Their referential demonstratives are huyo/hao. Animate agreement extends these forms to many people and animals whose noun spelling does not begin with m-/wa-.