Jeshi lilifika mjini.

The army arrived in town.

Breakdown of Jeshi lilifika mjini.

• kufika: to arrive
• mjini: in town
• jeshi: the army

Questions & Answers about Jeshi lilifika mjini.

Why is the verb lilifika and not just fika?

In Swahili, a full finite verb usually includes:

• a subject marker
• often a tense marker
• the verb stem

So lilifika breaks down like this:

• li- = subject marker for the noun class of jeshi
• -li- = past tense
• -fika = arrive / reach

Because the subject is jeshi, the verb has to agree with it. You normally cannot use bare fika here if you want to say The army arrived.

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Why does li appear twice in lilifika?

They are doing two different jobs.

In lilifika:

• the first li- is the subject marker
• the second -li- is the past tense marker

So the structure is:

li- + -li- + fika

That can look confusing at first, but it is completely normal in Swahili.

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Why does jeshi take the subject marker li-?