This can make it hard for beginners to recognize different verbs, until they first learn to recognize the prefixes and infixes used to. Unlike English verbs, Kinyarwanda verbs can be conjugated to include the verbs subject, and optionally the verbs object and indirect object. Abantu bakunda umupira - people (they) like football A verb ( inshinga) is an action or a state of being.Jean akunda umupira - Jean (he) likes football.We still need to use the appropriate prefixes even if the subject is given separately, so that the verb agrees with the noun: Kinyarwanda's different tenses are formed through different combinations of prefixes, suffixes and stems. The following verbs are now obsolete and use the standard past and participle forms (-ed): dwell, kneel, lean, mow, smell, spell, spill, spoil, trus. We call -kora the present tense stem, and -koze the past tense stem. The following verbs use the standard past and participle forms (-ed) in American English: burn, dream, learn. For example, consider the following conjugations of the verb gukora: In addition to multiple prefixes (and suffixes as shown later) almost every verb has a past tense stem. However because of Kinyarwanda's spelling rules, this may take several forms, e.g. In this dictionary, verbs are always given in their infinitive form (if they have one), which is formed by adding a ku prefix. We can see that -kunda is common to each of the conjugations so we call this the verb stem, and the prefixes n, u and a denote the subject of the verb. For example, consider the following three sentences:
This can make it hard for beginners to recognize different verbs, until they first learn to recognize the prefixes and infixes used to conjugate verbs with nouns. Unlike English verbs, Kinyarwanda verbs can be conjugated to include the verb's subject, and optionally the verb's object and indirect object. A verb ( inshinga) is an action or a state of being.