As mentioned in the introduction, Swahili is an agglutinative language, meaning that words can be constructed by stringing together individual components, called "morphenes", each conveying some specific information. In Swahili, verbs are the most important part of speech and constructed via a powerful system of aggulation. Here we will consider only the simplest verb construction. In the affirmative case (e.g., "I am jumping" rather than "I am not jumping") a Swahili verb can be constructed from three morphemes:

Subject marker + Tense marker + Verb root

The tables below lists possible values for these morphemes, including our first 6 verb roots:



These morphemes are totally interchangable. In other words, one can choose any subject maker and combine it with any tense marker and any verb root to create a syntactially valid word. Some examples of this are shown in the table below:


Before continuing, it is worth clarifying the meaning of each of the 4 tenses mentioned above:

• Simple past: a completed action, e.g. "I jumped".


• Present perfect: a completed action that is somehow related to the present, e.g. "I have jumped".


• Present continuous: an action that is currently occuring, e.g., "I am jumping". This is not to be confused with the simple present tense, i.e., "I jump". In Swahili, the present continous tense is often used even in cases where the simple present tense would be used in English. Swahili also has simple present tense, but it is a bit more complicated and is therefore omitted here.


• Future: an action that will occur, e.g., "I will jump".

Now try translating some verb below. After you get the hang out it, try it with this tutorial hidden.