It's been about three months and I've been working hard to learn Swahili. When I first arrived many foreigners claimed it was "an easy language", though at this point I'd politely disagree. I've written a brief overview on Swahili in a previous post, so I want to introduce some of the language in this post.
Swahili has a lot of loanwords due to the amount of Arabic influence on the language. It also has many loan words from Indian languages, Portuguese, Persian, and increasingly more in English. The number of loanwords is fairly comparable to English’s use of Latin and Greek.
The pronunciation is almost identical to Spanish, so that's a huge bonus for me as I've already studied Spanish. It's also similar to Spanish in that there are no "hidden" sounds, meaning that once you know how to pronounce the alphabet, you can theoretically read any Swahili words with accurate pronunciation.
There's a few basic things that make learning Swahili difficult for native English speakers. It’s use of a wide group of classes for words, which are denoted by prefixes such as m- and n-, can be a difficult thing for some English speakers to get comfortable with. While essentially the same as the gender system used by some European languages, the Swahili class system is both larger than what most Romance speakers are used to and less arbitrary in its assignment.
For example, nouns belong to any number of nine noun classes. I'll give two examples.
The first noun class I'll explain is the M/WA noun class. This is typically comprised of "people" words, such as child, which is mtoto for singular, and watoto for plural. A second group is KI/VI, which doesn't really have a concrete pattern with words for languages, onions, a bed, and matches all grouped in. Bed is kitanda and beds is vitanda. Many of these noun classes have sub classes which further complicate things. For example, in the KI/VI class, words that begin with CH take a VY for their plural form. So the word for room "chumba" becomes "vyumba" for rooms. This system wouldn't be so bad if all the words began with the letters of the noun class, but they are often mixed, which means you simply have to memorize which class words belong to and adjust accordingly.
One of the most challenging things about Swahili and the noun classes is the overwhelming amount of other grammatical rules that apply to each noun class. For example, demonstratives such as "this, that, these, those" are different depending on what the noun class is. So if we use a M/WA class noun, "That child" is "yule mtoto" and "this child" is "huyu mtoto". But if we use a KI/VI class noun, "That bed" is "kile kitanda" and "this potato" is "hiki kitanda". Of course if you want to make either of these plural, you have to learn a new article AND change the prefix to the noun (ex. "these children" is hawa watoto).
As if this wasn't enough, you must modify certain parts of speech depending on the noun class. For example, adjectives and numbers take the prefix of the noun class. Thus, when you're looking in the dictionary for the word "big", you'll see "-kubwa", which denotes that you must include the prefix from the noun class. Same goes for the numeral "four" which is "-nne". Further complicating things, not every adjective or numeral needs to have a prefix change. For example, numerals one through nine are conjugated, with the exception of six, seven, and nine. Numerals higher than nine are not conjugated.
Four big children = Watoto wanne wakubwa.
A big child= Mtoto mkubwa.
Four big beds= Vitanda vinne vikubwa.
A big bed=Kitanda kikubwa.
Although there are some similarities in Swahili grammar and English grammar, the differences are very tough for a non-native English speaker to get over!
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| Map of where Swahili is spoke in East Africa. |
The pronunciation is almost identical to Spanish, so that's a huge bonus for me as I've already studied Spanish. It's also similar to Spanish in that there are no "hidden" sounds, meaning that once you know how to pronounce the alphabet, you can theoretically read any Swahili words with accurate pronunciation.
There's a few basic things that make learning Swahili difficult for native English speakers. It’s use of a wide group of classes for words, which are denoted by prefixes such as m- and n-, can be a difficult thing for some English speakers to get comfortable with. While essentially the same as the gender system used by some European languages, the Swahili class system is both larger than what most Romance speakers are used to and less arbitrary in its assignment.
For example, nouns belong to any number of nine noun classes. I'll give two examples.
The first noun class I'll explain is the M/WA noun class. This is typically comprised of "people" words, such as child, which is mtoto for singular, and watoto for plural. A second group is KI/VI, which doesn't really have a concrete pattern with words for languages, onions, a bed, and matches all grouped in. Bed is kitanda and beds is vitanda. Many of these noun classes have sub classes which further complicate things. For example, in the KI/VI class, words that begin with CH take a VY for their plural form. So the word for room "chumba" becomes "vyumba" for rooms. This system wouldn't be so bad if all the words began with the letters of the noun class, but they are often mixed, which means you simply have to memorize which class words belong to and adjust accordingly.
One of the most challenging things about Swahili and the noun classes is the overwhelming amount of other grammatical rules that apply to each noun class. For example, demonstratives such as "this, that, these, those" are different depending on what the noun class is. So if we use a M/WA class noun, "That child" is "yule mtoto" and "this child" is "huyu mtoto". But if we use a KI/VI class noun, "That bed" is "kile kitanda" and "this potato" is "hiki kitanda". Of course if you want to make either of these plural, you have to learn a new article AND change the prefix to the noun (ex. "these children" is hawa watoto).
As if this wasn't enough, you must modify certain parts of speech depending on the noun class. For example, adjectives and numbers take the prefix of the noun class. Thus, when you're looking in the dictionary for the word "big", you'll see "-kubwa", which denotes that you must include the prefix from the noun class. Same goes for the numeral "four" which is "-nne". Further complicating things, not every adjective or numeral needs to have a prefix change. For example, numerals one through nine are conjugated, with the exception of six, seven, and nine. Numerals higher than nine are not conjugated.
Four big children = Watoto wanne wakubwa.
A big child= Mtoto mkubwa.
Four big beds= Vitanda vinne vikubwa.
A big bed=Kitanda kikubwa.
Although there are some similarities in Swahili grammar and English grammar, the differences are very tough for a non-native English speaker to get over!
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