Welcome to our fourth lesson to learn Lingala. In this lesson, we’ll look into more detail of how verbs tenses work in the past and future.
As we have discussed in the previous lessons, Lingala verbs are built around the root, changing both the prefix (start) and suffix (ending) of the word to change or show the tense.
When we look at verbs in the simple past, we find:
nazalaki
Notice that the root –zal– is preceded by the prefix na– which we have learned represents I. But we also have a different suffix: –aki. This makes the verb read as I was. So, the structure of simple past verbs in Lingala could be written as:
PREFIX + ROOT + aki
This applies to all the verbs we have learned so far. Notice some examples in the chart below:
| nakufaki | I died |
| tolingaki | we loved/liked/wanted |
| olobaki | you (singular) said/spoke |
| amonaki | he/she saw |
| bopesaki | you (plural) gave |
| esalaki | it did/worked/acted |
| nasepelaki | I enjoyed |
| totangaki | we read |
| eteyaki | it/they taught |
| bayebaki | they knew |
Let’s apply what we’ve learned and use the past tense in some simple sentences:
| natangaki babuku nyonso | I read all the books | I read books all |
| bana bapesaki ngai nsango malamu | the children gave me good news | children they gave me news good |
| tolobaki na bango | we spoke with them | we spoke with them |
| omonaki biso nyonso | you (singular) saw all of us | you (singular) saw us all |