Stative and Passive Contrast

Understanding the contrast between the passive and the stative is crucial for sounding natural in Swahili.

1. The Passive (-wa)
The passive voice demotes the agent (the doer of the action), but the agent is still implicitly present in the event. You can explicitly state the agent using na (by). Use this when you want to emphasize that an action was performed on the subject.
Example: Kikombe kimevunjwa. (The cup was broken [by someone].)

2. The Stative (-ika / -eka)
The stative voice completely deletes the agent from the sentence structure. Crucially, you cannot use the preposition na (by) with a stative verb to introduce an agent. This is a strict syntactic rule and the best way to test which form you need. It has two main functions:

• Resulting State: Describing the condition of something without caring how it got that way. Pragmatically, this is often used to deflect blame (e.g., a child saying "The cup got broken" rather than "Someone broke the cup").
• Potentiality: Describing if something can be done (e.g., readable, eatable, breakable). See stative potential reading.

Morphology and Vowel Harmony
Both are verb extensions inserted before the final vowel. The stative follows vowel harmony (roots with a, i, u take -ika; roots with e, o take -eka).

• Consonant roots: funga (close) → fungwa (be closed) / fungika (be closed/closable).
• Double-vowel roots: Insert an -l- syllable between the root and the extension, following vowel harmony: use -li- for roots with a, i, u and -le- for roots with e, o. nunua (buy) → nunuliwa (be bought) / nunulika (be purchasable); ondoa (remove) → ondolewa / ondoleka. Verbs ending in -aa (like zaa 'bear' or kataa 'refuse') also insert an -l- (e.g., zaliwa / zalika, kataliwa / katalika).
• Arabic loans: For verbs ending in -i or -u, replace the final vowel with -iwa for the passive or -ika for the stative. jibu (answer) → jibiwa / jibika. Verbs ending in -e retain the e and append -wa or -ka (e.g., samehe 'forgive' → samehewa / sameheka). Exception: Loans ending in -au (like sahau 'forget') behave like double-vowel roots and insert an -l- (sahauliwa / sahaulika).
• Monosyllabic verbs: These drop the infinitive ku- marker and have irregular extensions. kula (eat) → liwa / lika; kunywa (drink) → nywewa / nyweka.

Important Note: The stative is NOT an "agentless passive." It is a completely different voice. Also, do not assume all verbs ending in -ka are stative; many base active verbs naturally end in -ka (like pika 'cook' or cheka 'laugh').