"Hatujala mayai"

Translation: We have not eaten eggs

[AndyCole9]

How would you say 'we have not eaten THE eggs'? Would it not also be 'hatujala mayai'.

[AGreatUserName]

Yep. It should accept that here and I'd regard that as the most logical translation of this contextless sentence.

If someone says "We have not eaten eggs", I might assume they mean ever, and in Swahili, for that, you can say Hatujawahi kula mayai.

[adilalibra1]

I think that you can add object infix "YA" here: hatujaYAla mayai.

[AGreatUserName]

You can, but you don't need to.

[vitoreiji]

What is this -ja- particle?

[Catriona28475]

It is the negative of the perfect tense marker "-me-". So:
"Tu-me-..." = "We have ..."
"Hatu-ja-..." = "We have not ..."

[verdaserpento]

Habari! I see this phrase and translation and literally the previous phrase i have had in practice lesson hatujasoma vitabu the translation is " wi didn't read books". How should I understand what answer Duo rawould get?

[machieng]

what lesson was that? '-ja-' is the negative of '-me-' which is present simple tense i.e.

• We have read books - Tumesoma vitabu
• We have not read books - Hatujasoma vitabu

'We didn't read books' would be 'Hatukusoma vitabu'

[nzfleisher]

Do sentences like this mean ever or only recently?

[Catriona28475]

I imagine, as in English, that it all depends on the context. There is no context in this sentence. But if they meant not ever, I guess they would say "kamwe" (never), as in this TUKI dictionary example:
"kamwe haijawahi kutumika" (it has never been used).
http://www.elimuyetu.co.tz/subjects/arts/eng-swa/n.html

But from AGreatUserName's example above, "kamwe" doesn't seem to be essential.