Learn how to say "not" and "don't have"
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| Hamjamboni. Mimi ni Medina. Hi everybody! I’m Medina. |
| Welcome to Swahilipod101.com's “Kiswahili kwa dakika tatu,” The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Swahili. |
| In our previous lessons, we have been learning about the different usages of the “to be” verb ni and "to have", na. In this lesson, we’re going to learn about the negative form in order to say “I am not” and “I don’t have”. |
| So imagine you are going to see a movie with your friend. You want to know if he is ready, so you ask Uko tayari kwenda kwenye sinema? "Are you ready to go to the movie theater?" |
| He isn’t ready yet, so he replies, Siko tayari. “I’m not ready.” |
| Then you’d like to know if he already has the tickets. You ask, Unatiketi?, “Do you have the tickets?” and to your disappointment he answers Sina tiketi, “I don’t have the tickets”. |
| You heard two negative sentences.“I am not ready.” was Siko tayari. “I don’t have the tickets” was Sina tiketi. |
| Before we break these down, first I’ll teach you the full versions. |
| Mimi siko tayari. / Mimi sina tiketi. |
| [slowly] Mimi siko tayari. / Mimi sina tiketi. |
| Did you notice the word we added to make them negative? That’s right, it’s si |
| which as a particle means “not”. |
| So let's have a look at the way we switch from the affirmative to the negative. |
| If your friend were ready, he would say Mimi niko tayari, “I am ready.” But he wasn't ready, so he would say, Mimi siko tayari. |
| So to make it negative, you use the word si, which is the conjugated negative form of the “to be” verb ni. |
| -ko is a place marker, in this case the state of the speaker. |
| Together we have siko. |
| All together, we have Mimi siko tayari. |
| (Slowly) Mimi siko tayari. |
| Now let's take a look at the example for talking about what you have. |
| "I have the tickets" is Mimi nina tiketi, and "I don't have the tickets" is Mimi sina tiketi. |
| You can see these are similar to the earlier examples - you replace the pronoun ni with si to negate the statement. The word -na stays the same. |
| Lets again look at the negative form of the above statement. We have: |
| Mimi sina tiketi. |
| (slowly) Mimi sina tiketi. |
| Let's try a few more examples. |
| How would you say “I don’t have a car”? |
| If you did have a car, you would say Mimi nina gari. Can you figure out how to turn it into a negative? |
| That’s right, it’s Mimi sina gari. |
| How about a phone? If you do have one, it’s Mimi nina simu. So the negative is?... Mimi sina simu. Excellent! You’ve got it! |
| From earlier examples, you may have noticed that the pronoun changes depending on its class. Sina would be to the first person, huna to the second person, hana to the third person, hatuna to the first person plural and mna to the third person plural. However, the verb na “to be” remains the same. |
| Now it’s time for Medina’s Insights. |
| From the previous examples, you may have noticed that we have only used the first person pronoun. But what happens with the other pronouns? The rules for conjugating the pronoun cases in swahili are a little complicated. |
| Although at this point it’s not essential for you to master all the pronoun cases, you will at least know why the nouns keep changing into weird forms when you join us in our advanced lesson on SwahiliPod101.com. |
| So how about if you want to describe what your car or phone looks like? In the next lesson, we’ll take a look at how to use adjectives in Swahili. |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Kiswahili kwa dakika tatu lesson. |
| Kwaheri, tuonane tena! |
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