You can form very simple sentences such as ninashoma, 'I am reading', or anenda, 'he is going'.
But how do you say something like 'I see him'?
Objects
For this, we need the object. In English, these are the words like me, her or us which indicate the person an action is done to.In English, the object pronoun comes after the verb: I see him, I visited you. In Giriama, the object concord comes after the tense marker but before the verb: Subject - Tense - Object - Verb.
-ni-, -fu-, -hu- and -mu-
Given what you already know about subject concords, try to translate the following examples into English. -lola means 'look at' and -richa means 'leave'.
ni-na-mu-lola
fu-mu-lola
mu-na-ni-richa
a-na-hu-richa
ni-a-hendza
a-mu-hendza
fu-mu-lola
mu-na-ni-richa
a-na-hu-richa
ni-a-hendza
a-mu-hendza
In the next set of examples, I have not added dashes to break the word up. Try to translate these into English too:
ninamuricha
manahulola
ananihendza
funamuricha
ninahulola
mananihendza
manahulola
ananihendza
funamuricha
ninahulola
mananihendza
For I, we and plural you, the object concords are the same as the subject concords: ni and ni, fu and fu, hu and hu, mu and mu. So far, so good!
In the next post, we will look at the rest of the object concords, which are not the same. For now, translate the following examples into Giriama:
Think about context: if you say "You like us" or "They are leaving us", do you want to include the person you are talking to in us?
