TENSE is a favourite question-topic for any language, and for isiZulu it is a source of perpetual woe for many students (particularly in high school, but also lower down).
What is Tense?
Tense is the way that speakers and users of a language indicate when something happens, and is usually associated with a whole lot of adverbs (especially those called temporal adverbs) and a bunch of rules. isiZulu is no different!
What you will find on this page is the following information:
- Adverbs of time / Temporal adverbs
- Where tense fits into isiZulu sentences
- Simple tenses
- Compound tenses
- Implications and moods
You can scroll down and see these different sections, one by one. These will also be put onto separate pages in due course. For now, everything except part 5 has been fleshed out here!
1. Temporal Adverbs
Like almost every other language, isiZulu uses separate words to modify when an action happens. For ease of understanding, here they are broadly divided into past, present and future.
| when? | adverbs (isiZulu) | English translations |
| past | izolo kuthangi ngesonto elidlule ngenyanga edlule ngonyaka odlule nyakenye | yesterday day before yesterday last week last month last year the other year |
| present | manje namhlanje kuleli sonto kule nyanga kulo nyaka | now today this week this month this year |
| future | kusasa ngomhlomunye ngesonto elizayo ngenyanga ezayo ngonyaka ozayo nyakenye | tomorrow day after tomorrow next week next month next year a year away |
You’ve probably noticed the pattern in these phrases, and that they have a lot to do with the way that isiZulu describes time. In terms of how these temporal adverbs work in practice, they usually occur as the first or last word in a phrase or sentence, in the same place as locatives (which are locational adverbs, btw). It is also important to point out that the days of the week and other expressions of time can all, relatively speaking, fit into either of the three categories here depending on when they occurred or will occur.
2. The Syntax of Tense (aka where does tense fit in a sentence?)
If you are unfamiliar with the way that isiZulu smushes everything together into single words (technically called agglutination), then you should probably check out the stuff about uhlelo lwesenzo before we continue here. If you’re already familiar, then read on!
isiZulu tends to do most of the work around tense (at least in the simple tenses) in the second variable position, although the third almost always also gets involved. Have a look at the following table to see what that means:
| when? | parts of the word | example sentences |
| past | –e… past positive ‘short form’ –ile. past positive ‘long form’ –anga past negative –a– –a remote past positive | ngiyithenge izolo I bought it yesterday ngiyithengile. I bought it angiyithenganga I didn’t buy it ngayithenga I bought it long ago |
| present | –ya– –a present positive ‘long form’ – / – –a present positive ‘short form’ – / – –i present negative | ngiyayithenga I am buying it ngithenga yona I buy it angiyithengi I don’t buy it / I am not buying it |
| future | –zo– –a future positive immediate –zu– –a future negative immediate –yo– –a future positive remote –yu– –a future negative remote | ngizoyithenga I will buy it angizuyithenga I won’t buy it ngiyoyithenga I intend to buy it angiyuyithenga I don’t intend to buy it |
3. The Simple Tenses
What does it mean, if a tense is called ‘simple’? It means that the meaning is conveyed in one single word, rather than in two different words that are put together. If you think about it, most English expressions of tense are compound ones: I am driving, you were sitting, he had done it.
So it is in isiZulu. There are two main cases where the language usually uses compound forms, and for the rest of the cases it uses simple forms.
The most basic form of the verb in isiZulu is the simple indefinite present, without even the -ya- of the other examples in the table above. Over time, all of the verb-forms listed in the table above are regarded as simple. They are no longer regarded as two words mixed together, even though there are still signs of that mixing. But the words are not as difficult to form or understand as the two forms discussed in the next section.
4. The Compound Tenses
What are the two compound forms that are found most often?
Only one is tense in the traditional understanding of that word. It is called the past continuous tense, which is sometimes called the BE- tense. The other form will be dealt with in the next section, since it is an implication.
The past continuous tense is also called by other names: the imperfect is the most common name for it, since it shows that the action is regarded as unfinished, going on for some time in the past or beginning in the past and continuing into the present.
How isiZulu shows this is through using the verb ukuba, changed to a simple past tense, and then it follows this with a verb that looks a lot like the simple present. When these two words are said together often enough, it merges into one new word with odd characteristics, most notably that the negative doesn’t begin with A- and the subject concord is not the first sound that is heard. Broadly speaking, the BE- tense has two different patterns depending on whether the subject concord starts with a consonant (option A) or a vowel (option B). Have a look at the following table to understand it better.
| Options | long form | contracted form |
| Option A Positive Sentence | ngibe ngihlala I-was I-sitting libe lihamba it-was it-walking kube kushisa it-was it-burning | bengihlala I was sitting belihamba it used to walk bekushisa it began to burn |
| Option B Positive Sentence | ube uhlala you-were you-sitting ube ehamba he-was he-walking ibe ishisa it-was it-burning | ubuhlala you were sitting ubehamba he began to walk ibishisa it tended to burn |
| Option A Negative Sentence | ngibe ngingahlali I-was I-not-sitting libe lingahambi it-was it-not-walking kube kungashisi it-was it-not-burning | bengingahlali I wasn’t sitting belingahambi it didn’t used to walk bekungashisi it wasn’t burning [at the time] |
| Option B Negative Sentence | ube ungahlali you-were you-not-sitting ube engahambi he-was he-not-walking ibe ingashisi it-was it-not-burning | ubungahlali you didn’t used to sit ubengahambi he wasn’t walking ibingashisi it wasn’t on fire |
These take a bit of getting used to, and they vary greatly when people are speaking in different dialects, but the key thing to remember is the B. It is everywhere! It is the clue to interpreting this tense, because it is the bit that means ‘Was Being’.
Part 5 is coming soon. It’s pretty complex, in case you haven’t realised that yet.