jana
adverb
Yesterday; the day before today.
Use jana to say when something happened. In mwaka jana, it means last year.
Origins
Jana belongs to an older Bantu layer of Swahili vocabulary. Its use for yesterday is long established, and mwaka jana uses it to refer to the previous year. The available evidence does not identify a reconstructed ancestral form.
Sources3
Haspelmath and Tadmor / Lexibank, World Loanword Database CLDF (2009), wold-master/cldf/forms.csv row 43653.
Jana belongs to an older Bantu layer of Swahili vocabulary. Its use for yesterday is long established, and mwaka jana uses it to refer to the previous year. The available evidence does not identify a reconstructed ancestral form.
A. C. Madan, Swahili-English Dictionary (1903), 139.
Yesterday; the day before today. Jana belongs to an older Bantu layer of Swahili vocabulary. Its use for yesterday is long established, and mwaka jana uses it to refer to the previous year. The available evidence does not identify a reconstructed ancestral form.
Edward Steere, A Handbook of the Swahili Language as Spoken at Zanzibar (1884), 110.
Use jana to say when something happened. In mwaka jana, it means last year.
Examples
Nilifika jana.
I arrived yesterday.
Tulikula samaki jana.
We ate fish yesterday.
Jana kulikuwa na mvua.
It rained yesterday.
Ulikuwa wapi jana?
Where were you yesterday?
Nilinunua tiketi jana.
I bought a ticket yesterday.
Basi halikufika jana.
The bus did not arrive yesterday.
Jana nilizungumza na Amina.
Yesterday I spoke with Amina.
Tulitembea pwani jana.
We walked along the coast yesterday.
Nilikuja Kenya mwaka jana.
I came to Kenya last year.
