What’s the weather like?
This section forms the most crucial part of the isiSekelo sesiZulu – it shows you exactly how to go about forming an isiZulu sentence, while giving you some essential grammar.
Step 1 gives you a list of nouns, all grouped according to their noun classes. You will also see from Step 1 that nouns in isiZulu often have more than one meaning – allow yourself to explore all possible implications of the original meaning, and you’ll see that the secondary and tertiary meanings follow easily.
Step 1a looks at how to make a sentence or statement using only the nouns. This is useful if you’re wanting to say ‘there is…’ or ‘it is…’ (whether regarding weather or not, this rule comes in handy).
Step 2 gives you the first instance of concords. It shows how you make and use a concord to show that a specific noun is doing the verb. Concords show connection between nouns and other parts of speech (like adjectives, verbs and other nouns), mainly through sound. If you’re ever unsure about what the subject of a verb is, you can use the last one in this list – ku-. It’s the closest thing that isiZulu has to ‘it’.
Step 3 is something that you should treat like a decision tree – uhlelo lwesenzo. Every time you construct a verb statement in isiZulu, your first choice is whether the action happened or not. Every verb in isiZulu can be expressed as a positive (‘the boy ran’) or a negative (‘the boy didn’t run’). And that choice determines the form that the verb takes in each tense (present, past, or future). If you are lucky enough to have the iNkombandlela cards, these are the light blue pieces with dashes and labels. If you look at the two columns of isiZulu fragments, you’ll see that they either have a dash after them, on both sides of them, or before them. This shows where they occur in a verb – first, in the middle, or last.
Step 4 is like Step 1, except with verbs. Basically, you can add in the pieces from Step 3 into these verb forms, with some modifications. We’ll be exploring these more soon.
Step 5 includes some very necessary vocabulary – time phrases that you will hear very often. They can occur at the end of a phrase or at the beginning, depending on what you want to emphasise.
Step 1. Choose the subject of your sentence
Step 1a. Use these nouns directly
The resulting phrase translates as follows:
kunemvula (there is rain)
kunomoya (there is wind = it is windy)
etc.
Step 2. Use concords to link to verb-type things
Step 3. Choose the details of your action
Step 4. Choose what happens
Step 5. Add in some time markers
You can also add in any other adverb at this point. Adverbs either come first or last in a phrase or sentence!
Let me know what sentences you form, and where you encounter issues. Just a word of warning – some of the verbs prefer to be in the perfect form (-ile), which means they will sound a bit weird!