Subject Concords are essential when describing who or what is doing a given action. Have a look at the following table:
You will notice that there are 13 subject concords – the most common ones are the first six, because they are the concords that refer to people:
ngi- means I / si- means WE
u- means YOU / ni- means Y’ALL
u- means S/HE / ba- means THEY
The third pair of concords also mean that a single human (u-) or many humans (ba-) are the subject of the verb (that they are doing the action).
The rest of the concords refer specifically to nouns from the other noun classes (go here to read more about Noun Classes and what they mean), and so they refer to one or many of those nouns as the subject of a verb. Essentially they all mean either IT or THEY in English.
Subject concords are most often used in the construction of verb-phrases, which you can see in the following image. You can also read more about how verbs in isiZulu work here.
Assignment 1: Sentences involving humans
Step 1: Pick a verb from one of the vocabulary sections, or one that you are familiar with.
Step 2: Try out the various human concords with this verb, and see how the meaning changes. (You might want to check out some of the sections on tenses (like the simple present, for example) to see how you can change the meaning further in section 1, 2 or 3).
Step 3: Write some of the sentences in the comments on this page, for yourself and other learners!
Assignment 2: Sentences involving non-humans
Step 1: Pick a verb from one of the vocabulary sections, or one that you are familiar with.
Step 2: Try out the various non-human concords with this verb, and see how the meaning changes. (You might want to check out the section on tenses to see how you can change the meaning further in section 1, 2 or 3).
Step 3: Write some of the sentences in the comments on this page, for yourself and other learners!
If you understand this fully, then you are going to want to try one of the assessments for this concept. {coming soon!}