Lesson 11

Time for verbs.

Let's start with an irregular verb :D

Don't worry. This verb (at least for the forms that we are going to use) is the easiest of them all. (except of course for 'ni' which was one form for all persons.)

Our new verb is:

kuwa na - to have

Again don't bother too much about the form. Already the infinitive form is somewhat irregular. Usually infinitives come in one single word. However, let's remember 'ku-' as the beginning for infinitives.

In order to conjugate a verb we need 3 things:

• A - a person marker for every person
• B - a tense marker
• C - a verb stem

Of course there are plenty of other elements that you can mix into a verbform; you'd be surprised if I told you all the various options that Swahili offers for Prefixes, Suffixes and even Infixes... but let's keep the goodies for later and start with the basics.

So: A- a person marker

B - a Tense marker

-na- is the Present Tense Marker

C - a Verb Stem

And here we go lucky. With this verb - na - takes care of both tense marker and stem.

So we end up with this:

Je una mbwa? Do you have a dog?

Nina watoto. I have children.

Tuna mvulana na msichana. We have a boy and a girl.

Let's go!