hakuna
negative existential
there is not; there are no.
Often heard before a noun: what follows names the thing that is absent.
Origins
Hakuna is ordinary Swahili grammar: a negative locative or existential construction (ha- + ku- + na), not a borrowed slogan.
A. C. Madan, Swahili-English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903), 90.
Explains hakuna as the negative verb-form used as a simple “no / it is not.”
Edward Steere, A Handbook of the Swahili Language as Spoken at Zanzibar (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1884), 282.
Records hakuna as “there is not.”
Examples
Hakuna shida.
There is no problem.
Hakuna mtu hapa.
There is nobody here.
Hakuna sababu ya haraka.
There is no reason to hurry.
Hakuna chai mezani.
There is no tea on the table.
Leo hakuna mkutano.
There is no meeting today.
Hakuna nafasi ya kuogopa.
There is no room for fear.
Nilifika, lakini hakuna mtu.
I arrived, but there was nobody.
Hakuna haja ya kulipa sasa.
There is no need to pay now.
Dukani hakuna mkate.
There is no bread in the shop.
