Breakdown of Kesho kutwa, polisi watakuwa wametambua chanzo cha moshi barabarani.
Questions & Answers about Kesho kutwa, polisi watakuwa wametambua chanzo cha moshi barabarani.
Kesho simply means “tomorrow,” i.e. the next calendar day.
Kesho kutwa is an idiomatic way to say “the day after tomorrow.” It literally combines kesho (“tomorrow”) with kutwa (originally “midday” or “the height of the day”) but in modern usage it always means “the day after tomorrow.”
Swahili expresses “will have discovered” by combining:
- the subject prefix (wa- for “they”)
- the future marker -ta-
- the auxiliary kuwa (“to be”)
- the perfect marker -me-
- the verb root (tambua “discover”)
So for polisi (“the police,” 3rd-person plural) you get:
wa + ta + kuwa + me + tambua = watakuwa wametambua (“they will have discovered”).
Swahili uses different linking words based on the noun class of the head noun:
• class 5/6 → ya
• class 7/8 → cha
• class 9/10 → ya (but following special rules)
Because chanzo is class 7, its modifier takes cha, not ya.
The -ni suffix is the locative case marker in Swahili, roughly equivalent to “at,” “in,” or “on.”
Barabara (“road”) + -ni = barabarani, meaning “on the road.”
Yes, Swahili word order is relatively flexible. The usual neutral order is:
Subject – tense/aspect – verb – object – locative.
But you could say for emphasis:
Kesho kutwa polisi watakuwa wametambua barabarani chanzo cha moshi.
Here you’ve shifted the locative right before the object. It still makes sense, though the original order is most common for clarity.
• watatambua = “they will discover” (simple future)
• wametambua = “they have discovered” (present perfect)
To say “they will have discovered” (i.e. the action will be completed by a future point), Swahili uses the future perfect form watakuwa wametambua. It emphasizes completion before that future moment.