Numbers

1  moja
2  mbili
3  tatu
4  nne
5  tano
6  sita*
7  saba*
8  nane
9  tisa*
10  kumi*

* Most numbers agree with the class of the noun they describe, which means that you'll come across watatu, vitatu, matatu, and mitatu as well as just tatu (3).  The numbers 6, 7, 9 and 10 DO NOT change or take prefixes.

The number two (mbili) is slightly different, because in other forms the stem becomes -wili, e.g. wawili, viwili, mawili and miwili.

Watoto wawili    2 children
Miti mitatu         3 trees
Maneno manne  4 words
Vitabu vitano     5 books

Don't worry about these for the moment - just be prepared to recognise a number in a slightly different form.

After 10, the numbers continue "ten and one", "ten and two" etc.

11  kumi na moja
12  kumi na mbili
13  kumi na tatu
14  kumi na nne   etc.   Until.....

20  ishirini      (21 - ishirini na moja, 22 -  ishirini na mbili etc.)
30  thelathini
40  arobaini
50  hamsini
60  sitini
70  sabini
80  themanini
90  tisini

If you’re wondering why these numbers are so different from the numbers 1 – 10, it’s because they’re all Arabic.  So are 6, 7, and 9 (this is why they don’t agree with nouns).  So sita (6) and sitini (60) come from the same (Arabic) word, whereas tano (5) and hamsini (50) don’t.  If you speak Arabic, this is quite fun. If not, you just have to spend a bit longer learning the vocabulary.....sorry.

100         mia

1000       elfu

100,000  laki

1,000,000  milioni

Places

A few places you might be going:

mji             town
nyumba     house (home)
hospitali    hospital
duka          shop
soko           market
mkahawa  cafe
hoteli         hotel
shule          school
kanisa        church
mskiti        mosque
mlima        mountain
ufukwe      beach

To say you are going TO a place, just add 'ni' to the end of the word.

Ninakwenda mjini
Ankwenda sokoni
Watoto wanakwenda shuleni

As usual, this changes the stress of the word, e.g.  soko   -  sokoni.

'Ni' at the end of a noun also means IN or AT a place.  But Swahili has a special construction used to talk about 'being in a place' which we don't have in English, so if you want to say "I'm at home" you wouldn't say "mimi ni nyumbani", but "nipo nyumbani".  This involves a much longer explanation, so don't worry about it yet. For now, it's enough to remember the question:

Upo wapi?    Where are you?

Nipo....          I am
mjini, dukani, sokoni, nyumbani etc.

Negative sentences

If you've read through the last few posts and practised making questions and sentences, you should be able to ask a question like

Unapenda chai?     (Do you like tea?)

And reply

Ndiyo, ninapenda chai.    (Yes, I like tea.)

Everyone likes tea, so that's fine. But sometimes you need to be able to say that you don't like something - cockroaches, for example.

Sipendi mende.      I don't like cockroaches.

In the present tense, a negative sentence has no tense marker.  The present tense NA that you need in a positive verb disappears.

The person markers are also different from the positive person markers (ni, u, a, tu, m, wa).  You should recognise them from the 'jambo' greetings:

Si          I don't
Hu        You don't
Ha        He/She doesn't
Hatu     We don't
Ham     You (plural) don't
Hawa    They don't

All of them apart from 'si' add 'h' or 'ha' to the positive person marker.

The last thing to remember about negative verbs is that the 'a' at the end of the verb changes to 'i'.
Penda becomes pendi, sema becomes semi etc.  So you should have:

                                          Negative person marker + verb ending in 'i'

If you want to say that you don't like doing something, the negative verb is followed by an infinitive verb.  Infinitives begin with 'ku', e.g. kusoma, kupenda, kula.

Hatupendi buibui.                   We don't like spiders.
Hawajui kusema Kiswahili.    They don't know how to speak Swahili.
Siwezi kuona mlima.                I can't see the mountain.
Hutaki kula pweza?                 Don't you want to eat some octopus?
Hampiki chapati.                     You're not cooking chapatis (if you're speaking to several people)
Hafanyi kazi hospitalini.          She / He doesn't work at the hospital.

Exceptions

There are two groups of verbs that behave slightly differently.

1)  Foreign verbs

If a verb doesn't end in 'a', then it was originally a foreign word (usually Arabic).  Examples of these include ishi (live) and fahamu (understand).  These words do not change their final letter in the negative.

Ninafahamu  -   Sifahamu
Unaishi         -    Huishi

2)  Short verbs

A small group of Swahili verbs are known as 'short verbs', because they are too short to stand alone without their infinitive 'ku'.  There aren't very many of these verbs, but most of them are very common.  They include:

kula       - to eat
kunywa - to drink
kuja       - to come
kwenda  - to go

A normal verb like kupenda (to like) drops its infinitive 'ku' in a normal sentence.  These short verbs retain the 'ku'; you say "ninakula" (I eat), not "ninala".

In a negative sentence, however, short verbs lose the 'ku' prefix.

So KULA becomes LA.

Then, because the 'a' changes to 'i' in a negative verb, LA becomes LI.  All you're left with is the negative prefix plus 'li':

Sili nyama       I don't eat meat
Huli ndizi        You don't eat bananas
Hali samaki     He / She doesn't eat fish

These require a bit more practice, since 'sili' no longer looks much like 'kula'.

Unakwenda sokoni?    Siendi sokoni, ninakwenda nyumbani.
Are you going to the market?     I'm not going to the market, I'm going home.

Mnakunywa kahawa?   Hatunywi kahawa, tunakunywa chai.
Are you drinking coffee?  We're not drinking coffee, we're drinking tea.

Wanakuja mjini?  Hawaji mjini, wanafanya kazi leo.
Are they coming to town?   They're not coming to town, they're working today.

Asking questions

Question words usually come at the end of a sentence in Swahili (with the exception of 'kwa nini', why, which is always at the beginning.)

1)  NINI?   (what)

Unafanya nini?       What are you doing?
Ninafanya kazi.      I am working.

2)  NANI?  (who)

Jina lako ni nani?    What is your name?  (literally 'who is your name'?)
Jina langu ni Amina.   My name is Amina.

3)  WAPI?   (where)

Unatoka wapi?    Where do you come from?
Ninatoka Uganda.   I come from Uganda.

4) VIPI?  (how)

Vipi hali?     How are you (literally 'how is your state'?)
Nzuri sana.   Very well.

5)  GANI?  (what kind of)

Unafanya kazi gani?     What (kind of work) do you do?
Mimi ni mwalimu.         I'm a teacher.

6) KWA NINI?  (why)

Kwa nini unasoma Kiswahili?    Why are you learning Swahili?
Kwa sababu ninataka kuishi Tanzania.      Because I want to live in Tanzania.

7)  -NGAPI?  (how much, how many)

Ni shillingi ngapi?     How much is it?  (literally 'how many shillings is it?')
Shillingi elfu tano.     5000 shillings.

Ngapi is the only question word which changes form to agree with the class of the noun it describes. So you would ask 'watoto wangapi?' (how many children) or 'miaka mingapi?' (how many years). Don't worry about this for now, and just use 'ngapi' until you learn the correct form with each noun class.

8)  .......JE?    (how)

Unlike the other question words, 'je' is used as an affix of a verb, for example:

Unasemaje?    How do you say it?
(people often say this if they didn't hear you, in the sense of 'what did you say?)

Unajuaje?     How do you know?

Because the stress is (almost) always on the penultimate syllable of a word, this means that unajua becomes unajuaje, with the stress on the 'a' rather than the 'u'.

M-WA class

The M-WA class is the noun class for people, including the word for 'people':

mtu  -  watu   (person - people)

There are only two nouns in this class that are not people:

mnyama - wanyama  (animal)
mdudu   - wadudu     (insect)

A few M-WA nouns:

mtoto - watoto   (child)
mwanamke  - wanawake  (woman)
mwanamume - wanaume  (man)
msichana  - wasichana  (girl)
mvulana  -  wavulana  (boy)
mwana  - wana  (son/daughter)
mzee  -  wazee  (old man)
mzungu - wazungu (white person)

mwalimu  - walimu  (teacher)
mwanafunzi  - wanafunzi  (student)
mhandisi  - wahandisi  (engineer)
mkulima  - wakulima  (farmer)
mpishi  - wapishi  (cook)

Mwafrika  - Waafrika  (African)
Mtanzania - Watanzania  (Tanzanian)
Mwingereza - Waingereza  (English person)
Mkenya - Wakenya  (Kenyan)
Mganda - Waganda  (Ugandan)
Mfaransa  - Wafaransa  (French person)
Mjerumani - Wajerumani  (German)
Mholanzi  - Waholanzi  (Dutch person)
Marekani  - Wamerekani  (American)

And most other nationalities - you get the idea. The only unexpected one is
Mreno  - Wareno  (Portuguese person)

The reason it's called the M-WA class should be fairly obvious by now.  The same rule applies to adjectives describing the nouns.  The word nzuri is actually -zuri in its most basic form.  So instead of nzuri, words in this class are mzuri in the singular and wazuri in the plural.

Mwalimu mzuri (a good teacher)
Wakenya wazuri (beautiful Kenyans - or good Kenyans, depending on the context).

In the M-WA class the verb prefixes are a- (third person singular, i.e. he/she), and wa- (third person plural, i.e. they).  We've learnt these already, because we were using verbs to talk about people.

Mtoto anakwenda shuleni  (The child is going to school)
Waholanzi wanapenda chizi  (Dutch people like cheese)

A few useful M-WA class words:

huyu - yule        this - that                  Huyu ni mtoto wangu    This is my child
hawa  - wale      these - those             Hawa ni watoto wangu    These are my children
wengi                 many                        Watu wengi sana!     A lot of people
mwengine          other, another           Mtoto mwengine      Another child
wengine             other (plural)            Wazungu wengine   Other white people
wote                   all                             Wanafunzi wote wanasoma    All the students are reading

The most important letter for the M-WA class is W.  W is the prefix for the A of association and for possessives, for example:

mtoto wa jirani                 the neighbour's child
mwalimu wa Kiswahili     the Swahili teacher

mwalimu wake      his/her teacher
wadudu wangu      my insects

****

NB.  There are many nouns for humans and animals that are not in the M-WA class.  They take the plural of whichever noun class they are in, e.g. the plural of mbwa (dog) is mbwa.  BUT they follow M-WA class agreements for other things:

Mbwa wa jirani anakuja       The neighbour's dog is coming
Mbwa mkali                          A fierce dog
Mbwa wakali                        Fierce dogs

Noun Classes

Noun classes are very frustrating when you begin learning Swahili, partly because the whole concept is so different from anything we have in English, and partly because it takes time to learn the rules of each class.  

You can't tell what class a noun belongs to if you only know the singular of the noun (although sometimes you can guess), but you can always tell what class a noun belongs to as soon as you know the plural as well as the singular.

There are six noun classes:

1. M - WA

2. N

3. M-MI

4. KI-VI

5. JI-MA

6. U

A lot depends on the noun class, including:

a) Plurals.  So the plural of mtoto is watoto (M-WA), while the plural of kitabu (book) is vitabu 

(KI-VI).

b) Adjectives, including most numbers, e.g. mtoto mzuri (a good child) and kitabu kizuri (a good book). Most of these take the same prefixes as the plural, so they're not very difficult to remember.

c) Demonstratives, i.e. 'this' and 'that', and 'these' and 'those'. 

4) Possessives, i.e. my, your, his, her etc.  The first letter of these words changes depending on the noun class.

5) The A of association (ya, za, wa etc.)

6) Quite a few useful words, including 'many', 'other', 'how many?' and 'all'.  Like the possessives, the main part of the word is always the same, but the first letter or two changes according to the noun class.  E.g. Watoto wengi (a lot of children - M-WA), miti mingi (a lot of trees - M-MI), nyumba nyingi (a lot of houses - N).

7) The person prefixes in verbs, for 'it' and 'they'.  E.g. Yeye anakwenda (He goes - M-WA class), but inatosha (it's enough - N class).

Warning: if you try to learn several of these noun classes at a time it becomes very confusing. Make sure you're confident with the classes you know before you move on to the next one. And if you don't know what class a noun is and aren't sure that you're getting the grammar right - stop worrying, because it doesn't really matter.  Communication is much more important than accuracy, so if you say "watoto nyingi" instead of "wengi" people will understand perfectly well and they won't mind.  

Basic Verbs (positive sentences, present tense)

Swahili verbs do a lot of work in a sentence.  You can often use one word in Swahili when you'd need four or five in English:

Anawasomesha    -   She is teaching them

A verb like that may look long and complicated, but once you understand how the grammar works it  becomes much less daunting.

A + NA + WA + SOMESHA
She + present tense + them (object) + is teaching

or

Ninakupenda  -  I like/love you

NI + NA + KU + PENDA
I + present tense + you (object) + like/love

You do NOT need to use a separate personal pronoun, unlike in English.  "Ninakupenda" means "I love you", and using a personal pronoun before the verb ("mimi ninakupenda") would only be used if you really want to emphasise the "I" - 'It is I who love you'.

A verb always begins with a person prefix:

Ni        I
U         You
A         He / She
Tu       We
M        You (plural)
Wa       They

It is followed by the tense marker, which is na for the present tense.  In Swahili there is no difference between "I go" and "I am going" - both would be ninakwenda.

Ninasema  (ni+na+sema)  -  I say, speak
Unatoka   (u+na+toka)  -  You come from
Anasoma  (a+na+soma) - He reads/learns, or She reads/learns
Tunakula  (tu+na+kula) -  We eat
Mnakuja   (m+na+kuja)  - You are coming
Wanaondoka (wa+na+ondoka)  -  They are leaving

Here are a few useful verbs:

kwenda*   -  go
kuja*        -  come
kula*         - eat
kunywa*   - drink
soma         - learn, read
fanya         - do, make
fanya kazi - work (literally 'do work')
penda        - like, love
taka           - want
jua             - know
fahamu     - understand
elewa       - understand
omba       - beg (used as a polite way of asking for something, rather than 'I want...')
nunua      - buy
sema        - say, speak
toka         - come from
pumzika   - relax, have a rest

* The four verbs with a star next to them behave in a slightly different way, because they are short verbs.  See the next post on negative sentences in the present tense.

Muziki

Time for a music break.

1.  Mama Ntilie - Gelly, AT & Ray C

A mama ntilie is a woman who sells food at a street stall - the kind of place where working men might go for lunch. In reality these women seldom look like Ray C, but the dance moves of the small children and the odd guy in a tank top more than compensate for the lack of realism.  Some of the lyrics:

Usikae mbele, kuziba wenzako.  Unataka nyama? vipi pweza wako?
Don't sit at the front, blocking the others.  You want meat? How's your octopus?

2.  Tamaa Mbaya  - Twenty Percent

Twenty percent are probably my favourite bongo flava group. I recommend their film 'Furaha ipo wapi?' where there is an explanation for the name: "My parents named me 20%, because only God is 100%".  'Tamaa mbaya' means a bad wish or desire, and the song is a warning to a young girl still at school whose 'tamaa mbaya' is wanting to have a baby before she's finished her studies. The chorus goes:

Tuliza moyo wako, kubali mapungufu yako,

Calm your heart, accept your shortcomings
Rahisisha mahitaji yako, ongeza kipato chako

Meet your own needs, increase your income.

And the best line:

Mbuzi ni mbuzi, hawezi kuwa simba
A goat is a goat, it can't become a lion

3.  Bei Kali - Jose Chameleone

Chameleone comes from Uganda, and sings in Swahili, English and Luganda. Most of his songs are in Swahili, and he's very popular all over East Africa. I'm particularly fond of this one, which is the story of a poor young man who has a very demanding girlfriend and their adventures in three East African cities.  "Bei" means price, and "kali" is fierce, severe, or strict - in other words, something extremely expensive. I can't think of a translation that quite does "bei kali" justice though, so I'm going to leave it as it is.

Anapenada vitu vya bei kali
, kama hajui ati sina mali


Ananiomba vitu vya bei kali, 
Nikiwa sina yeye hanijali

She likes things that cost "bei kali", even though she knows I don't have any money

She asks me for "bei kali" things, and if I don't have them she stops caring for me.

Kutano la kwanza ilikuwa Mombasa,
Rohoni nilisikia nimempata sasa
Kumbe hata yeye alininoki pia
Jioni tukaenda pamoja out for a beer
Nilishanga alianza kuomba whisky
Ni vinyaji vya bei bila kuwa tipsy
Niliamua twende dance floor tucheze
Akakata ati hapendi nyimbo za Lingala!

Our first meeting was in Mombasa
I felt in my heart that she would be mine
She even came round to ask me out
In the evening we went out together for a beer
I was shocked when she started ordering whisky
And expensive drinks without getting tipsy
I decided to go to the dance floor and dance 
But she refused! She doesn't like songs in Lingala

His problems continue in the next verse when they go to Kampala and she demands to stay at the Sheraton, and then when they go out to a restaurant in Kigali and she refuses to eat ugali (he's had enough by this stage, and leaves her there).

I couldn't find a good video for this one, but here's the song:

If you like Chameleone, listen to 'Jamila', 'Valu Valu' and 'Kipepeo' as well.

4.  Jitolee - Mzungu Kichaa (with Professor Jay & Mwasiti)

Mzungu Kichaa ("crazy mzungu") is a Danish guy called Espen who has lived in Tanzania since he was fifteen; his Swahili is perfect, and he sounds as if he was born in Dar es Salaam. He's quite a big star in the Bongo Flava scene, and here he's singing with the wonderful Professor Jay.  The chorus goes:

Mikono juu!  Jitolee na usaidie
Ombi kwa binadamu upendo usipotee

Put your hands in the air! Get up and do something
Pray that love doesn't disappear

To be

The verb "to be" in Swahili is very simple, since it isn't actually a verb at all (in grammatical terms, it's called a copula).  The only word you need is ni:

Mimi ni daktari          I am a doctor
Yeye ni Mtanzania     He/She is Tanzanian
Wao ni wanafunzi      They are students

The negative form (am not, is not) is equally simple: si.

Wewe si mwalimu     You are not a teacher
Sisi si Waingereza      We are not English
Mimi si pweza            I am not an octopus

Because these don't change form, you need to use personal pronouns (I, you, he, she etc.) to specify who or what you're talking about.  These are:

Mimi      I
Wewe    You
Yeye      He / She
Sisi        We
Nyinyi   You (plural)  [sometimes spelt 'ninyi']
Wao       They   [sounds like 'wow!']

Asking questions is easier than in English, because you don't even have to change the word order.

Wewe ni mwalimu?    Ndiyo, mimi ni mwalimu.
Are you a teacher?   Yes, I'm a teacher.

Nyinyi ni Wakenya?  Hapana, sisi si Wakenya. Sisi ni Wazanzibari.
Are you Kenyan?    No, we're not Kenyan.  We're Zanzibari.

Often the word je is used to alert the listener to the fact that a question is coming, but the meaning remains the same:

Je, yeye ni fundi*?          Is he a fundi?
Je, nyinyi ni wapishi?    Are you cooks?

* It's hard to translate the word 'fundi' into English.  A fundi could be a mechanic, a bicycle repairman, an electrician, a carpenter, a tailor, a plumber, or anyone with some kind of useful manual skill - usually either a craftsman or someone who can fix things.

Greetings: Being Polite

When you meet an older person, you should greet him or her with respect:

Shikamoo!

If you're talking to an old man, you can say

Shikamoo mzee

Or to an old woman

Shikamoo mama

They will reply 'marahaba' (this word is only used as the reply to 'shikamoo').

***

You will hear the word karibu (welcome) very often.  You should reply 'asante' (thank you), or even asante sana (thank you very much).

If you are talking to more than one person, karibu becomes karibuni.
Similarly, if you are thanking more than one person, asante becomes asanteni.

***

People call "hodi!" if they are going into someone else's house or room, to mean "can I come in?"
Someone inside will reply 'karibu', "welcome, come in."

***

Apart from greetings with 'jambo?' and 'habari?', people may also greet you with

Mzima?

The reply is the same word, mzima.  It means 'whole' or 'complete'.

Or they may say

Salama?

And again you reply with the same word, salama. This means 'safe, secure'.

Both are simply greetings, to which the reply is always positive.

***

Sorry                                    Samahani
Sorry, I don't understand     Samahani, sifahamu
Say that again please           Sema tena, tafadhali          
Speak slowly                       Sema polepole                    

To sympathise with someone, for example if they've had bad news or a bad experience, say pole. People say pole all the time, to express sympathy for everything. You're walking down the road in the sun?  Pole, someone will say, because you might be a bit hot and tired. You tripped over? Pole. You just found out you have a terminal illness? Pole. Maybe pole sana.

(Pole is not the same as polepole, which means 'slow' or 'slowly'.)

***

When you're saying goodbye....

Tutaonana!    See you
Baadaye         Later
Kwaheri        Goodbye (if you're going away for longer). This becomes kwaherini, if you're
                       talking to more than one person.

Greetings: Habari

You can spend a lot of quality greeting time with the word 'habari', which literally means 'news'.

Any question beginning with 'habari' basically means 'How are you?', or "What's your news?"

Examples include:

Habari yako / Habari zako?        What's your news?
Habari gani?                                 What kind of news (do you have)?
Habari za asubuhi?                      News of the morning?   [Good morning]
Habari za mchana?                      News of the afternoon? [Good afternoon]
Habari za jioni?                            News of the evening? [Good evening]
Habari za leo?                               News of today?     [Good day, hello]
Habari za kazi?                             News of work?      [How's work?]
Habari za safari?                          News of your journey?     [Did you have a good trip?]

A good answer to any 'habari' question is nzuri, meaning good or fine.  Other responses include:

nzuri sana       very good
salama             safe (but here it just means 'fine')
safi                    clean (again, it just means 'fine' when it's the answer to 'habari')
njema               great

Greetings: Jambo

Jambo!

If you only know one word in Swahili, this is probably it.

Literally, 'jambo' means 'matter' or 'affair'.  Used alone, it is a greeting for foreigners who probably only know one word in Swahili. If you want to speak Kiswahili sanifu, or standard Swahili, you need to learn a few prefixes.  To greet someone, you should ask:

Hujambo?  

Hu- is a negative marker, so 'hujambo' means: "you have no matter?", or "there's nothing the matter with you?"

The correct reply is:

Sijambo.

Si- is the negative marker for the first person (I), so it means "I have no matter", or "there's nothing the matter with me."

The negative marker requires a different prefix for each person:

Si + jambo     =  sijambo     (I have no 'jambo')
Hu + jambo   =  hujambo    (You have no 'jambo')
Ha + jambo   =  hajambo    (He/She has no 'jambo')

Hatu + jambo  =  hatujambo  (We have no 'jambo')
Ham + jambo  =  hamjambo  (You [plural] have no 'jambo')
Hawa + jambo =  hawajambo (They have no 'jambo')

(Remember these negative prefixes. They will be useful).

So if you're talking to more than one person, you should greet them with

Hamjambo?

And they will reply

Hatujambo.

You can ask about other people as well.  If someone knows that you have children (or if they don't know you at all, but think that you should have children), they might ask

Watoto hawajambo?   (Are the children ok?  or 'The children have no 'jambo'?')

And you would reply

Hawajambo.        

***

The plural of 'jambo' is 'mambo'.  Mambo is also used as a greeting, particularly in a less formal situation and if you're one of the cool young guys.

If someone greets you with "mambo?" or "mambo vipi?"  you can reply with something like:

poa         cool
safi         clean

(If you want to be clever, try "poa kichizi kama ndizi" - crazy cool like a banana.)

How to learn Swahili (part one): Relax

If you have a tendency to be a bit pedantic about spelling and grammar, learning Swahili might help you loosen up a bit. I speak from experience.  As someone who learns languages more easily through reading than through listening, I find it hard to remember a word unless I’ve seen it written down. Until I feel confident about how to spell it, it hovers at the edge of my memory and threatens to disappear at any moment; if I realise I’ve been spelling it incorrectly, I have to start chasing it all over again until I can pin it down and make sure that it’s fixed in my head, each letter in its proper place. Perhaps this is a symptom of growing up in English, a language in which spelling is either right or wrong, and can be mysteriously different from the way a word is pronounced.

Swahili is kinder and more flexible.  Some people write “asante”, others prefer “ahsante” (thank you) but neither is ‘wrong’ – they both sound the same, if you say them out loud. The same goes for the expression for ‘let’s go’, which can be written “twende” or “tuende”.  In some parts of Tanzania ‘l’ and ‘r’ are interchangeable, so you might see “tayari” (ready / already) written as “tayali” if that’s how the word is pronounced. No one seems to think that the question of ‘correct’ spelling merits any kind of strong opinion.

Up to a point, the same goes for grammar and pronunciation. The standard Swahili that you learn in books or in class is based on the Swahili spoken in Zanzibar. The further you get from the coast, the more differences you hear in the way Swahili is spoken; for most Tanzanians it isn’t their first language anyway, so the way they speak it depends on the level of education they’ve had and the area they come from.  Everyone is used to hearing Swahili spoken with a wide variety of accents, often with some variations from standard grammar, sometimes incorporating words from other languages in ways that are changing every day (an extreme example is Sheng, an urban Swahili-based slang spoken in Nairobi which incorporates a lot of words from English and from other Kenyan languages).  So if you know that your pronunciation isn’t perfect and you’re worried about making grammatical mistakes, relax – as long as people can understand you, the rest doesn't matter that much.

Introducing Swahili Grammar

Learning Swahili can be difficult to begin with, because the grammar is very different from that of European languages. Once you’re used to the way it works, the good news is that there are very few exceptions to the rules – unlike English.

Here are a few basic points about how Swahili works:

1) There are no articles (a/an, the).  Mtoto can therefore mean child, a child, or the child.

2) One of the most common words you'll see is the "A of association" (-a).  Depending on the class of the noun it follows, it can be ya, wa, la, cha, vya, or za, and its function is to link the words before and after it. Usually it can be translated as "of".  E.g.

Mtoto wa jirani    -  the child of the neighbour (the neighbour's child)
Duka la vitabu     -  shop of books (bookshop)
Habari za leo       -  the news of today (today's news)

NB. The word 'na' means 'and', and is not an A of association.

3) Swahili nouns fall into one of six noun classes.  Each class has its own rules, so nouns behave differently depending on the rules of the noun class they belong to.

One example of this is plurals: the plural of mtoto (child) is watoto, because it belongs to the M-WA class.  The plural of mti (tree) is miti, because it belongs to the M-MI class. The plural of kitabu (book) is vitabu, because it belongs to the KI-VI class. When you begin learning Swahili this can be very frustrating, because you can’t predict what the plural of a noun will be until you have become familiar with each noun class. The same goes for words that describe a noun, including 'this' and 'that', and most adjectives.

4) Verbs do a lot of work in Swahili. You do not have to use a personal pronoun (I, you, he, she etc.) because it is contained in the verb.  If there is an object pronoun in the sentence (e.g. I saw her) this also becomes part of the verb.  For example:

ninakupenda  =  I like/love you

NI  +  NA                                      + KU                    +  PENDA

‘I’   +   present tense marker  + you (object)  +  like/love (verb stem)

Because of this structure, you need to have some idea of how these affixes work before you can use a dictionary.  In this case, to find the meaning of the verb you would look up “penda”.

5) Verbs can also have several forms which alter their meaning. The most common variation changes the verb from active to passive: “penda” is the basic form of the verb ‘like/love’, while “pendwa” means ‘to be liked/loved’.  Another carries the meaning of 'causing someone to do something': the verb "soma" means to read or learn, and "somesha" means to cause someone to learn, i.e. to teach. Once you know the rules, you can often guess the meaning of new verbs.

About Swahili

Swahili, or Kiswahili, is spoken by over 50 million people in East Africa, mainly in Tanzania and Kenya. In both countries the official languages are Swahili and English, but Swahili is only the first language for people on the coast. There are over a hundred other languages spoken in Tanzania, so most people speak one of these languages at home and Swahili is a second language. Swahili is part of the group of Bantu languages, which includes a large number of languages spoken in Southern, Central, and East Africa.  These share the same basic grammatical structure as well as a lot of related vocabulary, so if you already speak Luganda, Kikongo, or Zulu then the way Swahili works should seem quite familiar.

Like English, Swahili is not afraid to borrow words from other languages and make them its own. This goes back to days when the Swahili Coast was a centre of Indian Ocean trade and travellers from India, Persia, and the Arabia followed the monsoon winds to its shores.  In classical Swahili poetry as much as 50% of the vocabulary derives from Arabic and other Indian Ocean languages, while in everyday spoken language around a quarter of words you will hear have their origins in a foreign language, usually either Arabic or English.

Arabic

If you already know a bit of Arabic, you have a head start in learning Swahili. Arab traders first landed on the coast of East Africa more than a thousand years ago, bringing their language and religion with them.  Even the word “Swahili” comes from Arabic: sawaahil means coasts, so a sawaahili is a person from the coast. The majority of foreign words adopted into the language were originally Arabic, particularly words relating to sailing, commerce, religion (Islam), education, and urban living.

Examples of these include kitabu (book), kalamu (pen), dau (dhow, sailing boat), raia (citizen), safari (journey), rafiki (friend), and kamusi (dictionary).

Often, the reason that a verb or noun behaves differently grammatically is because it comes from Arabic.  All Swahili verbs, for example, end in the letter ‘a’. When you come across a verb that ends in ‘u’ (-fahamu, to understand) it almost certainly has an Arabic origin.

European languages

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach the Swahili Coast, where they built colonial settlements in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. They also left a few words behind them, including meza (table), bendera (flag), leso (handkerchief, piece of material), pesa (money, from ‘peso’), and karata (playing cards).

From the mid-19^th  century the British explored and later colonised East Africa. Many words for clothing, technology, and institutions come from English, such as soksi (socks), tai (tie), baisikeli (bicycle), treni (train), daktari (doctor), hoteli (hotel), dereva (driver).  The word for ‘school’ can be skuli, from English (more commonly used in Kenya), or shule, from German.

Swahili in Tanzania

Most children in Tanzania speak their tribal language (and often Swahili as well) at home, and then  become more fluent in Swahili when they start school. Unlike Kenya, where lessons are taught in English from the first year of school onwards, in Tanzania primary schools teach in Swahili. This is one of the main reasons why English is so much more widely spoken in Kenya. In Tanzania secondary education is in English - but this does not mean that all secondary school pupils have a good understanding of the language.

While many Tanzanians speak excellent English, particularly in larger towns, learning some Swahili gives you the opportunity to meet many more people, and everyone will appreciate it - even if you only learn a few polite greetings.