Advice on learning Swahili
March 25, 2019 9:20 PM   Subscribe

I'm an experienced language learner looking for some advice on learning Swahili. Looking for: resources, advice, experience reports, anything related! Details within!

I've wanted to try and get conversational in an african language for a while now. I think that Swahili would be a great choice: it seems relatively manageable, and is a regional lingua franca spoken by lots of people across a number of countries. Honestly, I don't know a ton beyond that, I'm still sort of in the information gathering phase...figuring out what my plan of attack should be.

That said, the downside of a language like Swahili is that there are a lot fewer resources than, say, French. As such, I'm looking for some advice, and some pointers. Anki looks like it does indeed have some decks, which is heartening, but I'm curious if you have any textbooks you can recommend, any web resources, etc. I don't really want to use DuoLingo if at all avoidable, as I'm not a fan of the platform.

Furthermore, while I don't plan to really study in depth until next year, I was thinking of trying to do a slow vocab drip until then, largely to try and get the noun classes into my brain. In general, for people familiar with the language, how did you tackle the harder parts of the grammar? I can speak Spanish, so I'm used to noun gender, but I've never studied a language with noun classes, or that sort of concordance, so I'm a bit intimidated by that.

Beyond that, I'm interested in whatever Swahili related stuff you have to share. Pitfalls, advice, information, anything. My goal is mainly to just get conversational and be able to talk to people in a part of the world I know little about, and get away from the indo-european and asian languages which I already speak :)
posted by wooh to Writing & Language (5 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
I was going to point you to the Kamusi Project, which was the only human-constructed online Swahili dictionary I was aware of, but that section looks down right now. Fortunately they do have a reference section with some other useful links on the language to peruse.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:49 PM on March 25, 2019


There is an FSI Swahili course. The reddit group /r/swahili looks like a great place to find resources, starting with their pinned post.
And there are a few threads on Swahili at the Fluent in 3 months forum, which mentions there are a bunch of Memrise decks available too.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 1:55 AM on March 26, 2019


Noun classses affect everything. You don’t want to get yourself mixed up or confused on those. I would consider some sort of paid quick intro session so that you aren’t making bad habits early
posted by raccoon409 at 4:10 AM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


A college consortium near me teaches Swahili and these are their resources (including syllabi, textbook information, and short videos in Swahili). You can also find tutors or language practice partners on iTalki.
posted by carrioncomfort at 6:08 AM on March 26, 2019


At least for getting started, I’m a big fan of the Pimsleur program. Check your local library as they may offer it as a digital download or CD loan. I used it before our trip to Kenya, and someone asked why I spoke Swahili with a Tanzanian accent! I also used Pimsleur’s Japanese program before a trip to Japan, and it served me very well. I still remember some Japanese now, twenty years later.
posted by ReginaHart at 2:27 PM on March 26, 2019


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