KISWAHILI FOR BEGINNERS: VERBS 2.

We proceed with our topic Swahili verbs

A sentence contains a subject and predicate .if the subject is a person.

The following person pronouns are used

Ni-           I.                        tu-                   we

U-             you.                  m-                   you

A-               he, she.            wa-                 they

To make a swahili sentence we need:

a. The subject prefix

b. The tense maker

c. The verb stem and in the case of monosyllabic verbs, the whole verbs,

For example, by using the stem soma “read” we can join a, b, c, together to get:

Ninasoma, I read.                           Tunasoma, we read

Unasoma, you read.                        Mnasoma, you read.

Anasoma, he/she reads.                 Wanasoma, they read

This is the present tense, it means, in English, both “I read” and “I am reading “.This becomes very clear in the verb kwenda “to go”:

a. mtoto anakwenda Shule kila siku

b. mtoto anakwenda Shule sasa.

These two sentences convey different ideas: (a) says “The child goes to school every day” and (b) says “The child is going to school now”.

It is now easy to add an object: e.g Ninasoma kitabu kizuri “I am reading a nice book”; Unasoma nini? What are you reading etc

The perfect Tense

nimesoma, I have read.                                             tumesoma, we have read

Umesoma, you have read.                                         Mmesoma, you have read

Amesoma, he has read.                                             Wanasoma, they have read