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Juzi tulitembelea maktaba mpya ambayo ina vitabu vingi vya hadithi.

Juzi tulitembelea maktaba mpya ambayo ina vitabu vingi vya hadithi.
The day before yesterday we visited a new library which has many story books.
FromLesson 35inHardcore Swahili
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Questions & Answers about Juzi tulitembelea maktaba mpya ambayo ina vitabu vingi vya hadithi.

What does Juzi mean and how is it used in Swahili?

Juzi means the day before yesterday. It’s an adverb of time that you can put at the beginning (or elsewhere) in a sentence to show when something happened.
Example: Juzi tulitembelea = “We visited the day before yesterday.”

How is the verb tulitembelea formed? Can you break it down?

Yes. tulitembelea =

  • tu- (we)
  • -li- (past tense marker)
  • tembelea (to visit)
    Put together: tu + li + tembelea = we visited.
Why is the adjective mpya placed after the noun maktaba?

In Swahili, adjectives normally come after the noun.
So maktaba mpya = “library new” → a new library.
Putting mpya before maktaba would be ungrammatical.

What is ambayo doing in this sentence?

ambayo is a relative pronoun meaning “which” or “that.” It agrees with the noun class of maktaba and introduces the clause ambayo ina vitabu vingi vya hadithi:
“a new library which has many story books.”

Why does the sentence switch from past tense (tulitembelea) to ina (present tense)?
The main action (tulitembelea) is in the past (“we visited”). The relative clause uses ina (“it has”) in the present tense because it describes an ongoing fact about the library: it currently has many story books.
How do you say “many story books” in Swahili—what are the parts of vitabu vingi vya hadithi?

Breakdown:

  • vitabu = books (plural of kitabu)
  • vingi = many (agrees with vitabu)
  • vya hadithi = of stories (genitive “of”)
    So vitabu vingi vya hadithi literally means “books many of stories” → many story books.
Why is vya used before hadithi instead of just ya?
Genitive concords must agree with noun class. vitabu is class 8, whose genitive prefix is vy-, plus the vowel a, giving vya. So vya hadithi marks “of stories” correctly for class 8.
Could we rephrase the relative clause with yenye instead of ambayo ina?

Yes. yenye also means “having” and agrees with maktaba. You can say:
Juzi tulitembelea maktaba mpya yenye vitabu vingi vya hadithi.
Both sentences mean “The other day we visited a new library which has many story books.”