Studying Swahili. Don's blog

Each time I have come to Tanzania, I study Swahili for 3-4 months in advance by myself with one of those teach yourself language courses.  I have marginal success so on my return to the US, I vow to continue studying so I will proficient the next time we go.  Years later, I am planning another trip so I open up the Swahili course again for the first time since I returned and pretty much have to start over with chapter two since I do recall the chapter one greetings.

Last year I was here for 6 months, but I was desperately studying tropical medicine so I had no time for Swahili studies.  This time, I procrastinated, got some misinformation, then procrastinated some more, but finally got started on tutored Swahili lessons.  Right now, we are working on verb conjugations.  My tutor's teaching method makes it so much clearer about how to conjugate.  None of my books or Rosetta Stone explained that there are mainly Bantu and Arabic verbs and that conjugation is handled differently according to the verb origin. That makes it so much easier. Nouns are a challenge too.  There are 8 different noun classes and each class indicates singular and plural differently.  We probably won't get to nouns this time out.

My tutor says he had a very smart student become fluent in 2 months with twice a week lessons. What with being old and feeble -minded and taking lessons once a week, I hope for fluency in 6 months next time out here.  According to the International Language Fluency Society, my level of fluency qualities as the dog level.  I aspire to achieve dolphin level of fluency.

Tanzanians all say that Swahili is easier than English. I suspect they are right.  Swahili developed as a language for trade between East Africans and Arabs. The original written form of Swahili was in that swirly, loopy script used for Arabic.  Fortunately, Europeans changed that and used the Greco-Roman script in use in Europe. They wisely chose phonetic spelling so pronunciation is easy. None of that silent letter stuff - every letter is pronounced. Every letter is consistently pronounce the same way. There are none of those shenanigans with the same sound being spelled differently like "ough', "ow" and "o" in though, tow, and go.  How about the pronunciation of "ough" in enough and though?  It is enough to make a Tanzanian say, "Uff Da."

Word origin is interesting.  There are competing explanations of the origin of referring to Caucasians as Wazungu.  The first explanation I heard was that the word means "explorer" and was used to refer to the first European explorers who started arriving in this area in 1498 (Vasco da Gama) (VdG was not real popular since he was, frankly, a pirate). The term was then used to refer to all Europeans, then all Caucasians.  The second explanation is that the term also means "one who wanders aimlessly" which makes sense since most explorers don't really know where they are going.  It is less complimentary explanation.  Vasco da Gama actually did know where he was going.  He sought and pioneered the ocean route from Europe to India. He actually did make it all the way to India.  Take that, Columbus.

Don

Tarangire National Park

Sunrise, Tarangire NP