Learn the top five mistakes people make when learning the language
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Medina: Hamjamboni! Welcome back to SwahiliPod101.com! I’m Medina. |
| Joshua: Hello everybody, I’m Joshua! This is All About, Lesson 12 - Top 5 Swahili Mistakes You Should Avoid. Listeners, you're in for a very useful lesson. |
| Medina: That's right, we're here to give you some tips on how to avoid the common mistakes made by learners of Swahili. |
| Joshua: Now remember, nothing is wrong with making mistakes. |
| Medina: It's how you learn! |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Joshua: But in this lesson, we'll give you a heads up so that you can be aware, and it will make your Swahili language learning experience a lot easier! |
| Medina: Let's get started! |
| Joshua: Tip number one – Don't talk fast! |
| Medina: It's so hard to understand someone when they speak too fast. |
| Joshua: When you hear native Swahili speakers, it will seem like they are talking a thousand words per minute, but don't feel like you need to keep up. They're native speakers, which means they can talk as fast as they want. |
| Medina: Many foreigners try to speak as fast as Swahili speakers do, and even though their grammar is perfect, they smash the words together in ways that we can't decipher. It usually takes years of fine tuning pronunciation to be able to speak as fast as a Swahili. |
| Joshua: I once met a guy who had been living in Kenya for almost a year, and people still had a hard time understanding even simple phrases, because he spoke so fast that he would jumble up the words. Once he started speaking more slowly, people started understanding him more. |
| Medina: I've seen that happen many times. Ok, what's the next tip? |
| Joshua: Tip number two – Learn basic conjugations! |
| Medina: In Swahili, verb conjugation is very similar to English. |
| Joshua: Yeah, it's really not as hard as you might think. Swahili is actually dead simple to learn for English speakers. |
| Medina: So don't worry! In Swahili, verbs usually follow the same pattern when we conjugate them. |
| Joshua: That sounds easy compared to the conjugation rules for regular and irregular verbs in English. |
| Medina: That’s right, you don’t have to memorize, but instead follow these five patterns when conjugating tenses. |
| Joshua: Ok, go on. |
| Medina: Take the verb ‘soma’ which in English is “to read.” |
| Joshua: In the present tense, the verb ‘soma’ will be ‘ninasoma’ in a sentence. The present tense is indicated by the tense marker ‘na’. |
| Medina: In the present perfect, the tense is marked by ‘me’. In this case, the sentence will be ‘nimesoma’. This means, “I have read.” |
| Joshua: : In past tense form, the sentence will be ‘nilisoma’, indicated by the marker ‘li’. In the same fashion, all verbs end in ‘li’ in their past tense. |
| Medina: In the future tense, the marker ‘ta’ is used. That will be ‘nitasoma’ to mean, “I will read”. |
| Joshua: Let’s look at the habitual form. In this case, the tense marker used is ‘hu’. It’s important to note that the pronoun ‘ni’ in ‘ninasoma’ changes to ‘mimi’ which means, “me”. |
| Medina: The whole sentence will therefore be ‘mimi husoma’. To imply, “I always read”. |
| Joshua: All the other verbs follow the same pattern. |
| Medina: Easy, right?! |
| Joshua: We'll try to guide you as well as we can through these lessons on how to conjugate properly. |
| Medina: That way, you learn faster and communicate better. |
| Joshua: What's our next tip? |
| Medina: Tip number three – Learn the pronunciation now! |
| Joshua: That's right, don't delay! We've dedicated an entire lesson series to pronunciation, because it's that important in Swahili. |
| Medina: A mentor of mine always said, "It doesn't matter how well you know the grammar, if you don't pronounce it right, they won't understand you." |
| Joshua: Luckily, in Swahili you have to read and pronounce the words as they appear, so you don’t have to be worried about the pronunciation. |
| Medina: Thats a relief! |
| Joshua: Definitely. Now onto tip number 4. This is that Swahili pronunciation is similar to English pronunciation. |
| Medina: Right. Swahili is developing at the same time as English, but some English words are hard to incorporate into Swahili. |
| Joshua: This means that Swahili sometimes borrows some of its vocabulary directly from English. |
| Medina: Because of this, in most cases the pronunciation may be the same but the way it’s written may be different. |
| Joshua: Could we look at some examples? |
| Medina: Sure. For example, the English noun “bag” becomes ‘begi’. The noun “computer” is known as ‘tarakilishi’ in Swahili, but many people also know it as ‘kompyuta’ with a similar pronunciation as in English. |
| Joshua: Yeah, it sounds more or less the same. |
| Medina: Awesome! Right? |
| Joshua: What's the 5th and final tip? |
| Medina: It’s about the Swahili writing system. |
| Joshua: Swahili uses the same writing system as English. It shares the same five vowels. |
| Medina: The difference comes in with the consonants Q and X, which are not included in the Swahili alphabetical structure, and instead has other consonants added to it. |
| Joshua: The additions include ‘ch’ c-h, ‘dh’d-h , ‘gh’ g-h, ng’ n-g-apostrophe, ‘sh’ s-h, and ‘th’ t-h because of their unique Swahili pronunciation. Notice the additional ‘h’ after the consonant. |
| Medina: For example, tea is ‘Chai’. “gold” is ‘dhahabu’. ‘ghathabu’ is “anger”. ‘Ng’ombe’ is “cow”. ‘Shamba’ is “garden”. ‘Thamani’ is “value”. |
| Joshua: Make sure to listen to and practice these examples, so that when the time comes, you'll have the right word with the right pronunciation! |
Outro |
| Joshua: Ok! Well, these are our top five tips for avoiding common mistakes in Swahili. |
| Medina: Keep these in mind, and your Swahili learning experience will be made a lot easier! |
| Joshua: You'll be right on track! |
| Josh: And that’s it for this lesson. Thanks for listening, and see you next time! |
| Joshua: Kwa heri! |
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