Learning a language?
Have a look at our partner website, Italki, where you can meet language exchange partners for free, or learn on Skype with personal, customi(s/z)ed lessons. Buy your first lesson, and get your second lesson free. Check out the link in the description below. Hello, everyone! Welcome to the Langfocus channel,
and my name is Paul. Today, I am going to talk about the Swahili language, or "Kiswahili," as it's called in Swahili. And by the way, "ki" is a prefix that means "language." Swahili is one of the most widely
spoken languages in Africa; and if we only consider languages that are native to Africa,
then, it is the most widely spoken. It is widely spoken over a wide area of East Africa. The number of native speakers of Swahili is actually
rather small -- somewhere between 5 and 15 million -- but it is widely spoken as a lingua franca
that unites the linguistically diverse population. Estimates vary, but the total number of proficient speakers,
if we include second-language and third-language speakers, could be as high as 150 million, or even more. Swahili is an official language in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and it's spoken widely in other countries
like Rwanda and Burundi. The closely related Comorian language, spoken in Comoros,
is also sometimes considered a dialect of Swahili. Chances are that you know a little bit of Swahili already,
whether you know it or not. If you've seen the Disney movie "The Lion King",
then you know the name "Simba". "Simba" means "lion" in Swahili. And maybe you remember Nala.
"Nala" means "gift" in Swahili. Then, there's Rafiki.
"Rafiki" means "friend" in Swahili. And of course, there's Pumba.
"Pumba" means "stupid" in Swahili. And of course, there's "hakuna matata."
"Hakuna matata" means "no worries" in Swahili. Simba, nala, rafiki, pumba, hakuna matata. Swahili is one of the Bantu languages. That's a traditional branch
of the Niger-Congo language family. There are around 250 Bantu languages, depending
on what we consider a language versus a dialect. The history of Swahili is somewhat unclear,
but it originally developed as a language
of coastal areas of Kenya and Tanzania. Fishermen spread the language to nearby islands,
then over the following centuries, traders from these islands
spread the language to a larger area of the coast. Today, this coastal region, stretching
from southern Somalia all the way to Mozambique, is where most of Swahili's native speakers are found. The areas where Swahili was spoken had a lot
of interaction with foreign traders, particularly those
from the Middle East, throughout the Middle Ages. One of the main commodities the traders were seeking
was cloves. So Persian and Arabic traders established
cloves farms in the Zanzibar Archipelago. And they also established trading settlements,
along the mainland coast. With both foreign traders and local African Swahili
speaking traders settling along the new trade route, Swahili absorbed many foreign loanwords,
especially from Arabic. In fact, the name of the language itself "Swahili"
comes from Arabic. The Arabic word for coast is "sāHil"
and the plural form is "sawāHil" So, with the prefix "ki", Kiswahili means
"the language of the coasts". In large part, this interaction between foreign Muslim
traders and local Africans is what made
the Swahili language what it is today, a Bantu language with a large number of
loanwords from other languages, especially Arabic. but also Persian, Malay and other languages too. Contact with European colonial powers
also influenced Swahili. Portugal began establishing colonies in East Africa
in 1505 CE, including in Zanzibar and
along the Kenya and Tanzanian coasts. And, as you might predict, this led to the adoption
of some Portuguese vocabulary. But, by about 1730 CE, Omani Arabs had retaken that region
from the Portuguese and re-establish control over it. Around that time, in the early 18th century,
Swahili spread further inland with Arab ivory
and slave trade caravans. This brought Swahili to more inland areas of Kenya and
Tanzania, to the eastern part of Congo, Northern Uganda
and Rwanda and Burundi In the mid 18th century, the British
and the Germans began colonizing the area. Germany took Tanganyika
or modern-day Tanzania as a colony and 1886. And the British took control of Kenya,
then called the "East Africa Protectorate" in 1895. And they both encourage the use of Swahili as
a national language to unite the population,
which spoke dozens of different languages Germany made Swahili, the official
and administrative language in Tanganyika, while the British made English the official language
at the highest levels in Kenya. English was the language
for national administration and for higher education, but Swahili was made the language for
local administration and for primary education. In order to help spread the Swahili language,
it needed to be standardized. So, in 1928, a conference was called for this purpose
and the dialect of Zanzibar was chosen as the basis
for the standard language Its status as an official language or national language
as well as the language of education has made Swahili widely spoken as a 2nd or 3rd language in Kenya and
Tanzania and in the eastern part of the Dem. Rep. of Congo. In Tanzania, around 80% of the people can speak it
and, amongst the younger generations, it is becoming more widely spoken as
a native language, especially in the urban areas. And the situation is similar in Kenya. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, it's most widely
spoken in the eastern part of the country. But, in total, around 50% of the population
are proficient in the language. It is also fairly widely spoken in Rwanda and Burundi
and to some extent in Uganda as well. But, even though Swahili has been made
an official language in Uganda
and it is compulsory to learn in schools, a lot of people are not interested in learning it
and a lot of schools haven't actually been teaching it. At least, that's what I hear. So what is Swahili like? Well, it used to be written in the Arabic script. But, because of European colonial influence,
it is now written in the Latin script. And it's written phonetically, so that each letter
represents just one sound in the language. Swahili has five vowel sounds which are
always fully pronounced and not reduced. There are no diphthong. So that means that
there are no combination of vowels pronounced
as a single syllable like "ai"or "au" or "ou" If you see two vowel side by side,
they have to be pronounced as separate syllables. This makes the phonology generally quite easy to learn.
And all Swahili consonants have English equivalents. But there are some things to be careful of, too. Nasal consonants can come before other consonants,
with no vowel in between. For example: "mtoto" means "child" "mbwa" means "dog" "ndizi" means "banana" Learning how to pronounce these sounds together
maybe a challenge at first, if you've never spoken
a language with that feature before. There are no articles in Swahili.
There is no equivalent to "a" or "the" in the language. Swahili has a system of noun classes. Noun classes are categories of different types
of nouns that are represented by specific prefixes. In most cases,
one singular and one plural for each type of noun. First the "m-wa" class. Nouns in this class represent people or animals beings. Words with the "m" prefix are singular,
those with the "wa-" prefix are plural. For example:
baby -> mtoto ; babies -> watoto
insect -> mdudu ; insects -> wadudu Another class is the "m-mi" class.
Nouns in this class represent trees or plants. Words with "m-" or "mu-" prefix are singular
while those with the "mi-" prefix are plural. tree : mti ; trees -> miti. Another class is the "n-n" class. This class includes a wide variety of nouns
including some animals, loanwords
and miscellaneous other words. This is the biggest of the noun classes,
because of all the loan words in Swahili. And for this class, the "n-" prefix denotes
both singular and plural. Bird : ndege ; Birds : ndege But this class gets quite complicated and sometimes,
the prefix changes. It changes to a "m-" sound
like an "m" before a "b" or a "v". Wine : mvinyo ; Wines : mvinyo And other words in this class lose their prefix altogether. So it's interesting to note that, in English, the plural form
is indicated by the "s" suffix, at the end of the word. But, in Swahili, it's indicated by a prefix
at the beginning of the word. Noun classes are known to be one of
the biggest challenges facing learners of Swahili. Nouns class prefixes are also applied
to adjectives that modify those nouns. So the word for "good". The base form is "-zuri". But we add a prefix into.
"mtu mzuri" means "a good person"
"watu wazuri" means "good people". So the prefix changes not only on the noun,
but also on the adjective. Adverbs can be formed from the base form
of the adjective by adding the prefix v. Good : -zuri ; Well : vizuri Bad : -baya ; Badly : Vibaya. Here's an example sentence :
"Alisoma vibaya" = "he read badly" Adverbs can also be formed from nouns
by adding the word "kwa" before them "siri" means "secret"
"kwa siri" means "secretly". Aside from noun classes, the other main thing about
Swahili that require some adjustment from learners
is the verbal system. In Swahili, a basic verb consists of a subject prefix,
a tense marker, an object infix, if the object is not a separate word, and the verb stem. Here are some examples. "Alinipa kitabu". This means "he gave me the book". "a" is the subject pronoun meaning "he" .
"li" is the tense marker indicating past tense. "ni" is the object marker for "me"
and "pa" is the verb stem meaning "give" And "kitabu" it means "book",
and that's a loanword from Arabic. We can change the tense of the sentence,
by changing the tense marker. "..." So this means "he will give me the book",
in the future tense. So we changed "li", the past tense marker,
to "ta", the future tense marker. Now let's change the subject of the sentence.
"...." that means "you will give me the book". So we changed the subject prefix from
"a", which means "he", to "u", which means "you". One interesting thing is that
there are negative subject prefixes. That means we can make the sentence negative
by using a different subject pronoun. Here's an example : "Hatanipa kitabu"
That means "he will not give me the book". So remember the positive form was "atanipa kitabu"
that meant "he will give me the book" but we change the "a" to "ha"
and that is the negative equivalent of the subject prefix. So every subject prefix has a negative equivalent
and you have to remember both and you have to think
about which one to use when you're speaking. The basic syntax of Swahili is SVO,
when there is no object infix. This means "Elephants eat grass". In the sentence, "tembo" means "Elephantz";
"wa" equals "they", that's the subject prefix; "na" equals present tense marker;
"kula" equals "eat" and "nyasi" equals grass. So you can see that, when we use a specific noun as
the subject, we still use the subject prefix attached to the verb. Another example "Ninapenda kula"
This means "I love eating" "Ni" is the subject marker meaning "I"
"na" is the present tense marker
"penda" equals "love" and "kula" equals "eating". And of course, that's SVO
(Rem : SVO = subject-verb-object) Is Swahili easy to learn? Well, the pronunciation is known for
being very straightforward. And the grammar is very logical but it's also very different,
unless you've studied a Bantu language before. The noun class system and the verbal system with
all of its affixes require some extra attention to learn. And, for English speakers, the lack of immediately
recognizable vocabulary might be a challenge. But, if you happen to speak Arabic, then you will
immediately recognize lots of Swahili vocabulary. Here are some examples:
"hatari" comes from Arabic KhaTar, which means danger "safari" comes from Arabic "safar" which means "travel" "mahali" comes from Arabic "maHal" which means "place". "kitabu" comes from the arabic "kitab" which means "book". "baridi" comes from the Arabic "baarid" which means "cold". And that's just a small sample.
There are lots of Arabic words in Swahili. Although the pronunciation has adapted
to fit into the Swahili phonological system. Swahili is a unique product
of the history of the East African coast and the interaction of the local Bantu people
with foreign traders from the Middle East and elsewhere. It is becoming more widely spoken and
continues to grow as a lingua franca in East Africa. If you're planning on living or traveling in the region or if you just want to learn about Africa and some of
its cultures, then Swahili would be a great language to learn. So the question of the day :
for people who have studied Swahili: What did you find challenging about it?
And what did you find straightforward or simple about it? and for proficient speakers of Swahili: how widely spoken is Swahili in your area ? Is it mostly spoken as a second or third language?
Or are there lots of native speakers as well? Let us know in the comments down below. Now, for anyone who doesn't follow Langfocus
on Twitter or on Facebook or on Instagram, why not? My name is "/langfocus" on all of those different social
media channels. So you can have a look for me there
and be sure to follow Langfocus. I'd like to say thank you to all of my Patreon supporters.
Thank you for your continued support. You are very much appreciated, even the people
who just pledged one dollar a month, that's all very helpful. So thank you for watching and have a nice day.
FSI's swahili course is dank, as is the book that comes with this audio.
Honestly I think the fsi swahili course is better organized and of higher quality than the basic spanish course .
http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu/swahili/audio_hinn/hinnebusch.html
The hinnesbuch text can be gotten on amazon for like ten bucks، and the audio is free there. Also, memrise already has the vocabulary typed in.
Na wewe je, unajua nini kuhusu kusoma lugha ya Kiswahili? Unapenda au sipendi? Nafikiri kiswahili ni kizuri, isipokuwa maneno kibantu. Silisomi maneno wabantu na silitambua .
Napenda ukurasa na sanaa nzuri wa kitabu cha Bwana Hinnesbuch . Anachora kwa wino na kalamu; vitabu sasa hawakuwa sanaa nzuri.
Pia, nafundisha chakula cha africa ya mashariki. Mama yangu na mimi tunapenda kupika irio na wanyama choma. Sijui kwa sababu waislamu wanatoka taifa wa Marekani wanataka kujifunza Kiarabu badala ya kiswahili.
Millioni wa waislamu wanasema kusema kiswahili...
Mazoezi wa kiswahili on android is free and great for practicing grammar.
/r/learnswahili
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0761809724/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1465698652&sr=1-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=Thomas+J.+Hinnebusch
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0819172154/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&dpID=41t1v5AmauL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL100_SR100%2C100_&refRID=FWN9YCDMZ1J09618F1G5
The exercises in the blue book go with the other book exactly by the lessom, but there are no answers .
Also, U Kansas has a great swahili program, and their free powerpoints are great too.
https://www2.ku.edu/~kiswahili/
also, githeri.com is a good place to learn Swahili!
Here is a Swahili song that many people seem to have heard before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK0wPpLryc4
After watching Paul's video, I noticed the word "wageni" (= visitors) in the song, which is then the plural of "mgeni".
All hail
lordlad Paul.I KNEW SOMEONE ELSE WATCH PAUL
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Love lad Paul. Wish people did less "talk abou Polish! I'm Polish!" comments.
I've been debating dipping my toe into the Swahili pool for a while now, and this video isn't helping matters any. It's such an interesting language and a nice mixture of easy and difficult for an English speaker. Plus it just sounds cool. I know that's kinda dumb, but it's true. I might have to start flirting with Swahili for a bit and see where it goes.
This really tempts me to learn it! Then I remember my other languages I should be focusing on and realise Swahili isn't that high on my list of priorities :-(