I was talking to a new friend who had emigrated from East Africa to the UK many years ago. She told me she could speak Swahili. I started a multilingual club for Toastmasters International running through languages from A to Z, starting with Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew, three linked languages, and ending with Zulu, an African language close to Xhosa. After a year of learning a language a week, with 25 slides on words on menus, words on maps, everyday words, landmarks for tourists to visit, I was exhausted, but I have two new friends keep to restart it. Under the letter S I featured Spanish, with Portuguese and Italian. Now I plan to add Swahili.
When I looked up Swahili in Wikipedia I was astonished to find that Swahili, far from being a minority language, is huge, with about 200 million speakers worldwide. (Could be only 150 million. Only!) So, let's start.
Swahili
I started Swahili on Duolingo. The first few lessons were easy, because it was all written in the alphabet I know. (I struggle with Greek, Hebrew, Russian which is a combination of Greek and Hebrew created by two brothers, one called Cyril, who gave his name to Cyrillic. I have conquered basic Mandarin signs but there are many more. Korean is a step ahead.
Duolingo Swahili
But back to Swahili. Dulingo nowadays has used its hundred or so employees over in the USA to create not just amusing animations to hold your attention, but a guidebook at the start of each set of lessons. Sometimes I photograph the guidebook page so I can keep it open next to me. You could print it off or have two screens open as a reminder when you do the exercises.
In Swahili I created my own memory aids. Eventually you should start to remember simply by the endless repetition. But when I do things last moment at night and like Cinderella I want to go off to bed at midight, I want to finish fast.
I ended up number one for the thirty in my Amethyst league, by doing about an hour of Swahili when I was too tired to do anything else at eleven to midnight.
5 SIMPLE & SAME SWAHILI WORDS
Today I wanted to find some simple words in Swahili. I already had a page of words in Spanish in Google translate. I changed the Spanish to Swahili and looked for words which were the same in order to find things easy to remember.
Swahili - English
hoteli - hotel
kamera - camera
latte - latte
menyu - menu
palm - palm
English - Swahili
camera - kamera
hotel - hoteli
latte - latte
menu - menyu
palm - palm
5 Easy Swahili words
Swahili - English
daima - (delightful - my memory aid) wonderful
kihispania - Spanish
soka - soccer
I - mimi
(In addition to mimi being I, M in front of a word means froM that country)
Mchina - Chinese
***
2 CONFUSIONS ! CLEARED !
you - wewe
he/she - yeye
consusingly, you looks like we and and he or she looks like ye, or old fashioned you. I needed to find a memory aid for these words which you will see below.
English - Swahili.
delightful/wonderful/lika a diamond - daima
Spanish - kihispania
soccer - soka
***
I - mimi (like me, me)
you - wewe / ninyi (we - you as well as me, not just me, you)
he/she - yeye (yeah, he and she too, yeah, he can come too, yeah, she can come too, yeye spelled like he and she, ye ye)
If this is all to easy, or you finish the Duolingo course, or you are planning a travel, you can look at the Swahili wiipedia.
The Swahili Wikipedia (Swahili: Wikipedia ya Kiswahili) is the Swahili language edition of Wikipedia.
Useful Swahili Websites
duolingo.com Swahili
translate google English - swahili
Wikipedia Swahili language
Wikivoyage - Kenya, Tanzania, Africa
Wikitravel (has advertisements, annoying if you are not travelling there, though they may highlight modern sights, hotels and tour operatora, but handy if you are planning a trip)
See my previous posts on Swahili.
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