The Kamusi Project
Pakubwa
I was recently reading an article in BBC Swahili and I was a little confused by the following sentence:
"Afisa mkuu wa shirika la umoja wa mataifa kuhusu chakula na kilimo FAO Jose Granziano amesema mvua kubwa iliyonyesha pamoja na misaada ya kibinadam iliyotolewa imechangia pakubwa kuimarika kwa hali ya maisha nchini somalia."
What confused me was the phrase "imechangia pakubwa". Now, I can infer from the context that "pakubwa" means "greatly" or "significantly", but I've never seen the pa- prefix used in quite this way before. I know the pa- prefix agrees with the noun "mahali" and is used in "pamoja", which is literally "one place", i.e. "together", but with "pakubwa" I'm not quite seeing the logic behind it. Is it literally "big place" which is then understood to mean "greatly"? I guess what I'm asking is why do we need to imply the word "mahali" to form this adverb? Why do we say "pakubwa" instead of "vikubwa"?
English
Swahili
Pa
Hi
Pa is simply a locative tense. When referring to some place you need to use one of the 3 locatives: PA KO MO
Pakubwa could mean big place and it could mean big at that place.
Vikubwa would only mean those things were big with no indication of where.
Example:
"Na mbona mmetupandisha kutoka Misri ili kutuleta hata mahali hapa pabaya?"
"kwa maana katika habari za madhehebu hiyo imejulikana kwetu kwamba inanenwa vibaya kila mahali."