Learn Hardcore Swahili: Tunapotembelea marafiki sokoni, tunakula samaki kitamu pamoja. - When we visit friends at the market, we eat delicious fish together.

It introduces a time clause, not just a simple “we visit”.
Without -po-, tunatembelea marafiki would just mean “we visit friends” (no “when…” idea).

Does tunapotembelea mean one specific time (“when we visit once”) or something more general (“whenever we visit”)?

On its own, tunapotembelea is a bit flexible:

It can mean “when we visit (this is what we do)” – more general/habitual.
Or, in the right context, it can refer to something happening this/that time.

In a sentence like:

Tunapotembelea marafiki sokoni, tunakula samaki kitamu pamoja.

most speakers will understand it as a habit or regular pattern:

“Whenever / when we (normally) visit friends at the market, we eat tasty fish together.”

Why isn’t there a word like “to” before marafiki? In English we say “visit our friends”, but not “visit at friends” – how does that work in Swahili?

In Swahili, tembelea takes a direct object, without a preposition:

kutembelea mtu = to visit a person
Kutembelea marafiki = “to visit (the) friends”

You do not say kutembelea kwa marafiki in the ordinary “visit friends” sense.

So:

Tunapotembelea marafiki
literally = “When we visit friends” (no extra “to” word is needed).

What does sokoni mean exactly, and how is it different from soko?

soko = “market”
sokoni = “at the market / in the market / to the market”

The -ni ending on nouns is a common locative marker in Swahili, meaning “in/at/on” that place.

So:

soko – the market (as a thing)
sokoni – at the market (location)

You can often also say kwenye soko or katika soko for “at/in the market”, but sokoni is very common and a bit more compact.

How do I know that marafiki sokoni means “friends at the market” and not something else?

In marafiki sokoni:

marafiki = friends
sokoni = at the market

Because sokoni is locative, it naturally answers “where?” about the friends:

marafiki wapi? → sokoni (“friends where?” → “at the market”)

So marafiki sokoni is understood as “friends who are (there) at the market”, not some special type of “market-friends” as a single compound noun.

What tense or aspect is tunakula? Does it mean “we eat” or “we are eating”?

Tunakula is:

tu- = “we”
-na- = present tense
kula = eat

It can cover both:

“we eat” (habitual/general)
“we are eating” (right now / at that time)

Context decides which English translation fits best.
In this sentence, combined with tunapotembelea, it sounds like a habitual action:

“When we visit friends at the market, we eat tasty fish together.”

Does samaki here mean one fish or more than one fish? How can I tell?

Samaki is one of those nouns that often has the same form in singular and plural.

samaki = fish (one fish or several fish, depending on context)

To be explicit, you can add numbers or other words:

samaki mmoja = one fish
samaki wawili = two fish
samaki wengi = many fish

In your sentence, samaki could be either one or several fish; usually people imagine more than one, but the grammar itself doesn’t force it.

Why does kitamu come after samaki? Where do adjectives go in Swahili?

In Swahili, describing words like adjectives normally follow the noun they describe:

samaki kitamu = tasty fish
chakula kitamu = delicious food
rafiki mzuri = a good friend

So the order is:

noun + adjective

not adjective + noun as in English.

That’s why we get samaki kitamu, not kitamu samaki.

Does kitamu change form when the noun is plural, like English “tasty” vs “tasties”, or Swahili kitamu/vitamu?

You’ll meet kitamu as the common form for “tasty / delicious”. A few key points:

The basic descriptive root is -tamu (“sweet, tasty”).
With ki-/vi- nouns (like kitu/vitu), you get:
- kitu kitamu – a tasty thing
- vitu vitamu – tasty things

In your sentence:

samaki kitamu – tasty fish

Because samaki is not a ki-/vi- noun, you don’t use vitamu here.

You may also see or hear samaki tamu in more strictly “textbook” grammar (without the ki-), but in everyday speech kitamu is very commonly used as the go‑to word for “delicious”, and people will immediately understand samaki kitamu.

What exactly does pamoja mean here? Is it necessary?

Pamoja literally means “together”.

In your sentence:

tunakula samaki kitamu pamoja
= “we eat tasty fish together.”

Is it required? Grammatically, no:

Tunakula samaki kitamu. = We eat tasty fish.
Tunakula samaki kitamu pamoja. = We eat tasty fish together (emphasizes doing it jointly).

You can also say pamoja na (“together with” someone), e.g. tunala pamoja na marafiki – “we eat together with (our) friends.”

Where is the word “we” in this sentence? I don’t see sisi written anywhere.

In Swahili, the subject pronoun (I, you, we, etc.) is usually built into the verb, not a separate word.

tu- at the start of a verb = subject marker for “we”

So:

tunapotembelea – tu- (we) + … = we (when we visit)
tunakula – tu- (we) + … = we eat

You only add sisi for emphasis or contrast, e.g.:

Sisi tunakula samaki kitamu pamoja.
= We (as opposed to someone else) eat tasty fish together.

Can I change the order of the two clauses, and put the “eating” part first?

Yes, you can put the main clause first and the “when…” clause second:

Tunakula samaki kitamu pamoja tunapotembelea marafiki sokoni.

This still means the same thing.
However, it’s very natural in Swahili (and in English) to put the time/condition clause first:

Tunapotembelea marafiki sokoni, tunakula samaki kitamu pamoja.
“When we visit friends at the market, we eat tasty fish together.”

Both are grammatical; the original order simply sounds a bit smoother.

How would the sentence change in the past or future?

You mainly change the tense marker inside the verbs.

Past (when we visited…, we ate…)

Tulipotembelea marafiki sokoni, tulikula samaki kitamu pamoja.
- tuli- = past “we”

Future (when we visit…, we will eat…)

Tutakapowatembelea marafiki sokoni, tutakula samaki kitamu pamoja.
- tuta- = future “we will”
- here the time marker changes to -kapo- (“when/once [in the future] we visit…”)

These keep the same overall meaning pattern, just in different times.