Welcome to the Department of Swahili!
Karibu kwenye Shule ya Kiswahili!
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Swahili (known in Swahili itself as Kiswahili) is a language spoken by 4-10 million people as a first language, and spoken by 40+ million people as a second language. It is an official language in three countries, but is used as a lingua franca in East Africa. Swahili is a Bantu language, but its vocabulary comes from Arabic, German, English, French, Potuguese, and Persian. It was originally written in Arabic script, but was romanized under European rule.
To show your interest in the Swahili department, sign up at the Swahili stream. |
- Department is founded: Sunday, February 27th 2011
- Swahili I is in development: Sunday, February 27th 2011
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If you are an English speaker, the chances are that you don't have many opportunities to speak Swahili. This is unfortunate, as one of the most important ingredients into learning a language is conversing in that language. It produces fluidity in speech and builds vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. It also develops the skill of understanding the language, which is a very different skill altogether. One way to overcome this obstacle is to talk to yourself in Swahili, but very slowly, to make sure that you have the correct grammar and pronunciation. As you progress in the courses, you should speed up the pace. To achieve understanding skills, you could listen to tapes or you could listen to movies with English subtitles to make sure you are getting the correct meaning of the sentence.
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