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Cheat Sheets part 3: Useful Swahili Greetings

Hassan — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:03:37 +0000

Almost everyone has heard of the word “Jambo” which is a simple greeting in Swahili. But before I share with you some other really important greetings, first we have to go through our pronunciation guide once again (you honestly didn’t think I’d let you move on without this part, did you?). So here it is:

‘a’ is pronounced as in ‘car’

‘e’ is pronounced as in ‘bet’

‘i’ is pronounced as in ‘tweet’

‘o’ is pronounced as in ‘door’

‘u’ is pronounced as in ‘scoop’

All vowels in Swahili are pronounced as stated above. These pronunciations NEVER change. No exceptions whatsoever.

After you’re done with this cheat sheet, you’ll have learned the basics of Swahili greetings and how easy it is to pronounce them. Here we go:

Jambo	Hi/Hello/Good day
Habari?	How are things?
Nzuri	Fine, good, terrible
Hodi!	Hello! Anyone in? (said on knocking or entering)
Karibu	Welcome/Enter
Kwaheri	Goodbye
Asante	Thank you
Bwana	Mister, the equivalent of monsieur in French
Mama	Like the French madame or madamoiselle, for adult women
Unaitwaje?	What’s your name?

Visualize yourself speaking Swahili fluently and clearly. Imagine yourself absorbing every word and pronouncing them clearly…perfectly…easily. And if you haven’t gotten the chance to grab your free “Secrets to Learning Swahili Quickly report”, do it now: Go to http://www.swahili101.com

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Cheatsheets pt 2: Super Quick Sentence Construction

Hassan — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:26:03 +0000

In the next few minutes we’re going to learn how to construct a simple Swahili sentence. As you read every word of this tutorial, you will become really amazed at how simple the Swahili language actually is.

Construction 101:

No matter which language you look at, sentences generally have a verb in them. So we can generally agree that verbs are crucial in sentence construction.

In Swahili, verbs ALWAYS carry with them the subject and the tense. (Write that down and repeat it 3 times)

Example: “Ninacheza”

“Ninacheza” is actually a complete sentence which means “I am playing”.

Let’s deconstruct that sentence:

The ‘Ni’ prefix stands for the subject “I”

The -na- affix stands for “am” showing the tense i.e. the “present continuous” tense

“cheza” is the root of the verb “play”

With that said, here’s a quick exercise:

Replace the verb “Cheza” with any of the following verbs to come up with your own sentence:

Verb	Meaning
Cheza	Play
Ruka	Jump
Ongea	Talk
Lala	Sleep

Example: nina____ (insert your verb here)

Congratulations! You’re now armed with the basic knowledge you need to construct a simple sentence for yourself.

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Swahili Cheat Sheets Pt 1

Hassan — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:40:15 +0000

This is the first cheat-sheet I’ll be revealing to you…Numbers!

Before we go further, there are 2 specific rules I want to give you which you should apply whenever you come across a Swahili word.

Here they are:

Rule No.1: All vowels in Swahili are pronounced as stated below:

‘a’ is pronounced as in ‘car’

‘e’ is pronounced as in ‘bet’

‘i’ is pronounced as in ‘tweet’

‘o’ is pronounced as in ‘door’

‘u’ is pronounced as in ‘scoop’

These pronunciations NEVER change. No exceptions whatsoever.

Rule No. 2: Swahili consonants are generally pronounced the same way as English consonants (letters b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, and v)

With that said, let’s learn some numbers:

NUMBER	SWAHILI WORD
1	Moja
2	Mbili
3	Tatu
4	Nne
5	Tano
6	Sita
7	Saba
8	Nane
9	Tisa
10	Kumi

Remember: As long as you stick to our 2 pronunciation rules, you’ll never go wrong with Swahili words.

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