“I’ll give you your money tomorrow”: Indirect objects
You add a prefix after the tense prefix for an indirect object, too. But to indicate that you’re using an indirect object, you also have to modify the end of the verb.
An indirect object is the “her” in “I bought her a book”. It’s like “to her”.
You write this as nilimnunulia. If you wrote nilimnunua, without modifying the ending, it’d just mean “I bought her”, as in “I paid money and I got her for a price”.
How do you modify the endings?
It depends on the vowel in the emphasised consonant. The emphasised consonant is usually the second last one in a word in Swahili. There are three rules.
- If the emphasised consonant has an i, a, or u (like in pika, taka or uza), the last vowel becomes an ia (e.g. pikia, takia, uzia)
- If the emphasised consonant has an e or o (like in leta or soma), the last vowel becomes an ea (e.g. letea, somea)
- If the emphasised consonant starts with a vowel (e.g. nunua), add in an l so it’s easier to pronounce. (e.g. nunulea)
Some examples
| Verb | Emphasised consonant | Vowel | New ending | Modified verb | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -pika (to cook) | pi | i | ia | pikia | Hakutupikia ugali (He did not cook us ugali) |
| pata (to get) | pa | a | ia | patia | Ninakupatia kitabu. |
| unda(create) | u | u | ia | undia | Nitakuundia sentensi {I will create a sentence for you) |
| -leta (to bring) | le | e | ea | letea | Nitawaletea vitabu. (I will bring you some books) |
| -soma (to read) | so | o | ea | somea | Niliwasomea watoto jana. (I read to the children yesterday) |
| -nunua (to buy) | ua | a | lia | nunulia | Ninamnunulia watoto viatu (I am buying the child some shoes |
There is one more thing to note: when forming this new verb form, if the verb would end in a vowel you add an l (lowercase L) before the ending from the chart above. This helps with pronunciation.
For instance, take the verb -nunua. Following the rules from above, -nunua would become -nunuia. Pronouncing this is a little odd with the triple vowel, so we add an l to make it simpler to say: -nunulia.