The few exception verbs: Monosyllabic verbs
The lion’s share of Swahili verbs are regular.
A few verbs have a single syllable, apart from the verb stem. These show up as exceptions to the rules below.
The most common irregular monosyllabic verbs are:
| English | Swahili |
|---|---|
| to eat | kula |
| to come | kuja |
| to drink | kunywa |
| to give | kupa |
| to be | kuwa |
| to die | kufa |
When you see exceptions below about monosyllabic verbs, these are the ones. There are a few others, but they’re much less commonly used.