Happily for us, Kiswahili is a fairly straightforward language to learn. Most words sound exactly how they look and look exactly how they sound. The language borrows heavily from Arabic, Portuguese and of course English, and it’s been fun to discover the “Swahili’ed” version of some very familiar words.
For example, doctor is daktari, while nurse is nesi. Both work at the hospitali. When I pay for my fish and chipsi, the waiter gives me my chenji. Today, we practiced counting nambas and learned the days of the “wiki”. After class, the skies were so buluu, I had to take a picha.
Other words are just plain fun to say, or seem just to sound right. My favorites are the animal and food words:
Giraffe - twiga
Insect - dudu
Elephant - tembo
Vegetable - mboga mboga
Chicken - kuku
And most importantly, we’ve mastered some key survival words:
Water - Maji
Bathroom - Choo (pronounced “cho”)
“No way! That's too much! Lower the price!” - Punguza bei!
("Kiswahili" is the proper name for the language Swahili as it's spoken in Tanzania--and East Africa I believe.)
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