Sedi Nyanata :: Negation in the Aorist Tense

In this post we're going to look at a lot of examples of the first and most basic Igbo tense - The Aorist.

This tense is what you're going to use most of the time to make simple Igbo sentences.

This post will explain how to negate in the aorist tense.

Here we go.

Look at the following sentences.


Fa fu nni.  - They saw (some) food.

The verb root root in this sentence is "fu" (see).

In English, the negative version of this sentence would  be "They DID NOT see (some) food."

Igbo isn't like English. .... At all.

In Igbo, verbs are made negative by means of Suffixes.

If you don't know what a suffix is, a Suffix is a grammatical particle that is attached to the end of a verb or verb root to change its meaning.

Igbo has A LOT of suffixes.

In fact, practically EVERYTHING in Igbo involves suffixes and prefixes of some sort.


Now back to the topic.

In Igbo, in order to make a verb in the aorist tense negative, you add the suffix -ro  to the verb root.

In the sentence "Fa fu nni", the verb root is "fu" (see).

To make this negative, we add -ro to this verb root, making "furo".

Now plug that back into the sentence, and you've made the sentence negative.


Fa fu nni (they saw food) = Fa FURO nni (they DID NOT see food)

Pretty easy huh?