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#21Zulu by Qinisela
ZuluEnglish

Ngilunywe ngumiyane.
Emva kwamahora amabili, ngidle amaphilisi amabili.
Emva kweviki elilodwa, ngidle amaphilisi amanye amabili.
Ngidla iphilisi elinye onke amalanga.

I was bitten by a mosquito.
After two hours, I took two pills.
After one week, I took two other pills.
I take another every day.

Vocab

  • -bili (adjective): two
  • -dla (verb): eat
  • -dwa (quantitative stem): one
  • emva kwa- (preposition): after
  • ihora (noun 5/6): hour
  • ilanga (noun 5/6): day
  • iphilisi (noun 5/6): pill
  • iviki (noun 5/6): week
  • -luma (verb): bite
  • -nke (quantitative stem): all, every
  • -nye (adjective): more, some, other, another
  • umiyane (noun 1a/2a): mosquito

Grammar

Zulu is an agglutinative and mostly prefixing language. The basic word order is SVO (subject-verb-object).

The nouns are divided up into 14 noun classes, though only a few are used here. The class of a noun is shown by a prefix on the noun. Some classes are singular and some are plural. The plural of a noun is formed by changing its noun class to the corresponding plural class. The noun classes are shown below:

Singular Plural
1. um(u)- 2. aba-
1a. u- 2a. o-
3. um(u)- 4. imi-
5. i- 6. ama-
7. isi- 8. izi-
9. in-, im- 10. izin-, izim-
11. u-
14. ubu-
15. uku-
17. uku-

Adjectives and other things like the quantitative stems have to agree with the nouns they modify. The agreement is shown by a prefix on the modifier.

Verbs take prefixes that show agreement with subject, optionally an object, and tense. There are also some suffixes on verbs. The personal subject prefixes are ngi- (I), si- (we), u- (you), ni- (you all), u- (him/her), ba- (they). The only tenses used here are present tense and past tense. Present tense verbs end with -a and past tense verbs end with -e. You can form a passive verb by putting the suffix -w before the last vowel. This suffix sometimes causes consonants in the verb to change. The agent (person or thing doing the acting) in a passive verb construction is marked with a prefix ng-, y-, or w-.

Zulu doesn't allow two vowels to be adjacent in a word, so when two vowels come into contact, some changes happen to fix that.