Learn Hardcore Swahili: Sisi tulitembea sokoni wiki iliyopita tukapata chai nzuri. - We walked to the market last week and found good tea.

Sisi is the 1st person plural pronoun “we.” In Swahili, the subject is already marked on the verb (here tulitembea), so including Sisi is optional. You use it for emphasis or clarity, but you could simply say Tulitembea sokoni… and still mean “We walked to the market…”

How do you form tulitembea?

tulitembea breaks down as:

tu- = subject prefix “we”
-li- = past tense marker
tembea = verb root “walk/travel”
So tulitembea literally means “we walked.”

Why is the second verb tukapata instead of tulipata?

Swahili uses a special past‐narrative (consecutive) marker -ka- to link events in sequence. Here you have:

tu- (we)
-ka- (then/after that)
pata (get/receive)
So tukapata = “then we got.” If you used tulipata, you’d just have a separate main‐clause past “we got,” without the immediate-sequence sense.

What does sokoni mean, and why the -ni ending?

soko = “market.”
The suffix -ni is the locative marker meaning “in/at/to.”
So sokoni means “at (or to) the market.”

How does wiki iliyopita mean “last week”?

wiki = “week.”
iliyopita is a relative clause “that passed,” built from:

ili- = class 9 relative prefix (for wiki)
-opita = verb root “pass”
Together wiki iliyopita literally “the week that passed” = “last week.”

Why is nzuri after chai, and does nzuri change form?

In Swahili, adjectives follow the nouns they describe.
chai nzuri = “tea good.”
Adjectives agree with noun classes. For class 9/10 (like chai), nzuri stays the same. In other classes it changes (e.g. mtoto mzuri, watoto wazuri, chakula kizuri).

Why isn’t there na (“and”) between the two actions?

The consecutive marker -ka- in tukapata already links the result to the previous action (“we walked… then we got”). If you wanted a plain “and” you could say for instance:
Tulitembea sokoni na tulipata chai nzuri
using na plus the normal past marker -li- in the second verb.