Appendix:Swahili personal pronouns

This page documents the grammatical details of personal pronouns and pronoun concord in Swahili. See Appendix:Swahili noun classes for details of the noun class system.

Independent pronouns
Independent pronouns are optionally used
 * as the subject of verbs without subject concord:, , the tense,
 * to draw the contrast between the subject or the object of a given verb with other persons or objects.

Subject and object concord
Subject concord is used in all finite verbs (except the plain imperatives) and goes at the very beginning, before the tense and aspect markers.

Object concord is used if the object is definite and goes right before the verb stem, after tense and aspect markers and after the relative marker. The / is always removed from the verb when object concord is present.

Relative
Relative concord is used The relative can concord with either subject or object, or be in one of the adverbial classes ( or a locative class). First and second-person relative concord in the verb is identical to third person.
 * suffixed to the verb stem to form the general relative,
 * suffixed to the tense marker or the negative marker  to form tensed and negative relative forms, with eventual object markers following.

The same morpheme is used When suffixed to, , , there exist forms that distinguish first, second, and third person.
 * suffixed to, such as to denote object concord in ,
 * as concord in
 * to form a general subordinating conjunction,
 * or to form the emphatic copula,
 * the first part of ,
 * the suffix in.
 * the suffix in.