Learn how to use the verb "to come"
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| Welcome to Swahilipod101.com, Karibuni kwa Swahilipod101.com, “Kiswahili kwa dakika tatu,” The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Swahili. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to use the verb penda. |
| In this lesson, we will learn how to use the verb kuja, the fourth verb in our series dedicated to the most common Swahili verbs. |
| kuja means "to come", and it’s used a lot! Let’s start with the conjugations for this verb. |
| Nnakuja - “I am coming”, Unakuja- “You are coming”, Anakuja - “He is coming”, Tunakuja- “We are coming”. |
| Let’s imagine a situation where a group of your friends are planning to go camping. They ask you if you would like to come too - Ungelipenda kuja kwa kambi? |
| Supposing you want to go, you will say, Ndio, ningelipenda kukuja! That means "Yes, I would like to come!” |
| [slowly] Ndio, ningelipenda kukuja! |
| So let’s break down this answer. |
| First we had- |
| Ndio which is simply "Yes", as we learned in the previous lessons. |
| Then ningelipenda which is "I would like". It can be broken down further: |
| ni is a pronoun indicating the person involved. |
| -ngeli used to imply “would” in a polite form. |
| Can you guess what penda means? From the previous lesson, we learned that it means “like”. In this case it indicates a wish or interest. |
| So, altogether it is Ningelipenda kuja. |
| Kuja can be used just like the English verb “to come” to ask someone to approach you. If you are requesting your friend to come and visit you, for example, you would say Kuja unitembelee - “Come and visit me.” |
| In some cases kuja means “arrive.” If you are reporting to a teacher about whether John has arrived in class, you may say, Yohana ameshakuja darasani. “John has arrived in class. |
| A good word to remember that is often used with kuja is pamoja. It basically means “along” or “with”, so if you would like to ask your friend if she’s coming with you, you can just say |
| Unakuja pamoja nami? |
| The verb kuja is often used when you want to confirm someone's plans, for example |
| Unakuja shuleni leo? |
| Which would mean “Are you coming to school today?” |
| To answer this question, you can add something after this verb, for example Ndio, lakini ninakuja kuchelewa. Here you said "Yes, but I am coming late." |
| The word for “late” is chelewa, and you can also use it by just saying nitachelewa, which is simply translated in English as “I will be late”. |
| You can also use the verb kuja in an imperative form, njoo. Then it would be similar to the English imperative “come”. |
| For example, if a teacher is instructing students to come, He may say, njooni to mean “come, all of you.” In a singular sense it will be njoo, “come.” |
| As you noticed, kuja changes to njoo in its imperative form. In this very form you may often hear someone say, Njoo hapa! for “Come here!” a common phrase directed to a junior by a superior. |
| Now it’s time for Medina’s Insights. |
| In English there are a few other usages for the verb “to come”, other than physically going to or arriving at a place. For example, kuja can be used to talk about the coming of an activity or a season. In this case, you may say, |
| Kiangazi utakuja mwenzi ujayo. “Summer will come next month.” |
| In this lesson, we learned how to use the verb kuja in its various forms. |
| Now, our series about common Swahili verbs is over, and from the next lesson, we’ll start learning some question words in Swahili. |
| Do you already know how to ask the word “What” in Swahili? I’ll be waiting for you with the answer in the next Kiswahili kwa dakika tatu. |
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