Learn Hardcore Swahili: Bandari alizotembelea zilikuwa mbali sana na kijiji chetu. - The ports he visited were very far from our village.

Bandari alizotembelea zilikuwa … → zilikuwa shows plural agreement → “the ports/harbors”
If it were singular, you’d expect ilikuwa instead of zilikuwa:
- Bandari alizotembelea ilikuwa mbali sana … → “The port he visited was very far …”

How is the word alizotembelea built up, and what does each part mean?

Alizotembelea is a single verb form with several pieces stuck together:

a- = subject prefix “he/she”
-li- = past tense “did”
-zo- = relative marker for class 10 (plural N-class) referring back to bandari
tembele- = verb root “visit”
-a = final vowel

So a-li-zo-tembele-a literally encodes something like:
“he/she – past – which (them) – visit – FV” → “(which) he/she visited”

In normal English, we render this as “that he (she) visited” referring to the ports.

So what exactly does alizotembelea mean in this sentence?

In this sentence, alizotembelea functions like an English relative clause:

bandari alizotembelea ≈ “the ports that he/she visited”

It does two jobs at once:

It says “he/she visited (them)” (past action).
It marks which ports we are talking about (a relative “that/which” idea).

So it’s not just a plain “visited”; it’s “visited (ports) which …” → “ports that he/she visited.”

Why is it zilikuwa and not walikuwa or ilikuwa?

Swahili verbs must agree with the noun class and number of the subject.

Bandari here is plural, class 10 (N-class plural).
The subject prefix for class 10 plural is zi-.

So:

zi-li-kuwa → zilikuwa = “they were” (for class 10 things)
wa-li-kuwa → walikuwa = “they were” (for people, class 2)
i-li-kuwa → ilikuwa = “it was” (for many class 9 singular nouns, including singular bandari)

Because we are talking about ports (plural, non-human), zilikuwa is the correct form.

What does mbali sana mean, and why both words?

mbali = “far”
sana = “very / a lot”

Together, mbali sana = “very far.”

Sana is a general intensifier often placed after the word it’s modifying:

nzuri sana = very good
baridi sana = very cold
mbali sana = very far

Why is it mbali sana na kijiji chetu? Isn’t na usually “with”? How does it mean “from” here?

Yes, na most often means “with,” but in certain fixed expressions it’s used where English uses “from,” especially with distance expressions:

mbali na … = far from …
karibu na … = near to / close to …

So:

mbali sana na kijiji chetu = “very far from our village”

Literally, it’s more like “(in a state of) being far with respect to our village,” but idiomatically it matches “far from our village.”

Why is it kijiji chetu and not kijiji yetu?

Possessive adjectives in Swahili agree with noun class.

kijiji is class 7 (ki-/vi- nouns).
The class 7 concord for -etu (our) is chetu, not yetu.

Patterns:

Class 7 singular: kijiji chetu = our village
Class 8 plural: vijiji vyetu = our villages

So:

ki- class → ch- in the possessive: kijiji chetu
vi- class → vy- in the possessive: vijiji vyetu

Yetu would be used with other classes, e.g.:

miji yetu (our towns), nyumba yetu (our house), depending on class.

Could we rephrase bandari alizotembelea using ambazo, like in “ports which he visited”?

Yes, you can express the same idea with the relative pronoun ambazo:

Bandari ambazo alitembelea zilikuwa mbali sana na kijiji chetu.
= “(The) ports which he/she visited were very far from our village.”

Comparison:

Bandari alizotembelea …
uses the short, embedded relative marker -zo- in alizotembelea.
Bandari ambazo alitembelea …
uses the separate relative pronoun ambazo (class 10: ports) plus a simpler verb alitembelea.

Both are grammatical and natural. The embedded form (alizotembelea) is very common and a bit more compact.

Where is the word for “he/she” in this sentence? I don’t see a separate pronoun.

Swahili usually doesn’t use separate subject pronouns (like he, she, they) unless needed for emphasis. Instead, the subject is built into the verb prefix.

In alizotembelea:

a- = “he/she” (3rd person singular subject prefix)

So alizotembelea by itself already encodes “he/she visited (them which …).”

If you really want to emphasize “he” as opposed to someone else, you can add the separate pronoun:

Yeye alizotembelea bandari … = HE (as opposed to someone else) visited the ports …

Why isn’t there a separate word for “that” like in “ports that he visited”?

In Swahili, the “that/which” of a relative clause is normally built into the verb, not a separate word.

In alizotembelea:

-zo- is the relative marker matching bandari (class 10, plural).
It plays the role of English “that/which (them).”

So:

bandari alizotembelea
literally has “ports he-past-which-them-visited” fused into the verb.

English needs a separate “that,” but Swahili handles that inside the verb with a relative concord like -zo-, -yo-, -cho-, etc., depending on the noun class.

Could bandari be singular in this kind of sentence? How would the sentence change if it meant “the port he visited”?

Yes, bandari can be singular; the form stays bandari, but all the agreement would switch to singular class 9:

Plural (current sentence):

Bandari alizotembelea zilikuwa mbali sana na kijiji chetu.
= The ports he visited were very far …

Singular version:

Bandari aliyotembelea ilikuwa mbali sana na kijiji chetu.
- aliyo- instead of alizo- (relative for class 9 singular)
- ilikuwa instead of zilikuwa (singular agreement)

So the surface noun bandari is the same, but the verb and relative marker show whether we mean “port” or “ports.”

Can the word order change? Could we say Alizotembelea bandari zilikuwa mbali sana na kijiji chetu?

Not in that exact way. That version is not a natural relative-clause sentence.

In this structure, the noun and its relative verb need to stay together as a unit:

Bandari alizotembelea = “the ports that he visited”

The whole noun phrase Bandari alizotembelea then acts as the subject of zilikuwa.

You can move the whole phrase around in the sentence (for emphasis or style), but you don’t normally break it like:

✗ Alizotembelea bandari zilikuwa … (this confuses what is subject vs. object)

A natural alternative keeping the relative relationship clear is:

Bandari ambazo alitembelea zilikuwa mbali sana na kijiji chetu.

Here again, bandari ambazo alitembelea stays as one subject phrase.