Learn Swahili the ‘Hard Way’
If you’re travelling, working, or volunteering in Tanzania or Kenya, acquiring a foundational knowledge of Swahili . By engaging with the language beyond ‘Jambo’ and ‘Hakuna Matata’, you’ll gain the respect of your peers, as well as deeper appreciation of East African culture more broadly. Although I’m still relatively early in my own learning journey, I hope these tips will help you cross the initial chasm of ‘language paralysis’. This guide presumes you have 1–2 months of time to devote to part-time self study before you embark on your trip to East Africa, and you’re comfortable with basic English grammar — I recommend brushing up on your grade school parts of speech!
Step 1: Language Transfer
In my opinion, the ideal way to start learning Swahili is with the Language Transfer course by Mihalis Eleftheriou. Mihalis’s course is structurally very similar to the authentic Michel Thomas audiotapes for European languages. The teacher is sat in a room with a true beginner student, and he walks her through how to be constructive in it. Very little vocabulary is taught, and instead the focus is drawn to how verbs are combined with pronoun, tense markers, and verb extensions in order to create meaning. Since Swahili is a language that borrows extensively from languages like English, German, Portuguese and Arabic, vocabulary can often be guessed or reasoned about logically; however, if you don’t internalize how to put the verbs and pronouns together you won’t be able to express yourself one iota. By listening to the course, pausing to think about what’s next, and actually speaking as if you were a student, you will slowly internalize the most essential rules necessary that will make your speech understood. I recommend listening to the course all the way through at least twice. The first time you can listen to the tapes while relaxed at home with your finger ready to hit the pause button after every prompt. By the second listen, you should be able to go for a walk or do some light housework while recalling all of the translations before the model student. Overall, this phase of learning can be completed comfortably in 3–4 weeks.
Step 2: Colloquial Swahili
After completing the Language Transfer course, the next resource I recommend is reading Colloquial Swahili by Martin and Mcgrath. As opposed to other beginner methods like Kiswahili, msingi wa kusema kusoma na kuandika, the University of Kansas course, or the FSI course, Colloquial Swahili strikes a suitable balance between methodical and complete grammar explanations with fun and culturally relevant dialogues and exercises. The readers are ‘graded’ to each chapter, and the text never feels overwhelming to the student. After completing all of the written exercises and reading the texts out loud, you’ll gain a more academic and theoretical understanding of what you would have already internalized from the language transfer course — plus you’ll now be comfortable with exposure to the written language. This phase can be completed in roughly 2 weeks if you dedicate 1 hour to each chapter in the textbook.
Step 3: Immersion
Now that you’ve built up a foundation that combines an ‘intuitive’ and ‘academic’ understanding of Swahili sentence structure, you’re more than ready to engage with the language in real life. To improve your reading, following newspapers like The Swahili Times and BBC Swahili for topical coverage, as well as Swahili language Wikipedia will expose you to new vocabulary as it’s used in print. If you use chrome, installing the translate extension can help you look up individual words as you work your way through each article. Although it will be above your level to start, I encourage you to focus and stick through each article as it’s the process of ‘unsticking’ yourself that will build up your confidence in your own abilities.
As for speaking, the number one practice I recommend is having a language partner to practice with daily. It could be a boss, coworker, or friend — however, most importantly they must be patient and invested in your success. Spending roughly equal amounts of time listening and producing is critical to growing your abilities and confidence over time.
Antipatterns to Avoid!
The Duolingo Trap: Although Duolingo’s course initially seems to be accessible; however, the course lacks rigor and the ‘gamified’ nature of selecting responses doesn’t cover how to actually produce the language (speaking or writing). Everyone I know who has used Duolingo fundamentally lacks confidence in speaking and writing despite having poured up to dozens of hours into the app. Plus, everyone hates being upsold!
The Flashcard Trap: While less pernicious than the Duolingo trap, extensive use of flashcards encourages learning by rote as opposed to thinking more wholistically about the language and the relationships the different terms have to each other. In particular, many Swahili verbs map onto multiple English equivalents. I’ve found that rough or idiomatic translations have been better for my understanding than the more literal word-for-word translations.
