Does anyone know of any discord communities that are active for hanging out and general discussions?

Thank you in advance!

Hello I’ve been learning Swahili for about 6 months now. I’m learning off duolingo but I don’t feel it’s teaching me properly. Do you recommend any online classes I could sign up for or what would be the best way to learn Swahili ?

Thank you!

Hi,

I am a Kenyan living in the US wanting to learn swahili but wanted to learn vocab that is more from the Kenyan dialect rather than Tanzanian. Does anybody know where I can find resources that have vocab more closely resembling Kenyan dialect?

Thanks

Mawaidha ninayoweza kuwapa ni kuanza na vitabu vya hadithi za watoto na pia, jaribu kuzungumza na wengine kwa kutumia Kiswahili katika mazungumzo ya kila siku.

Hiki ndicho kitabu ambacho ningeanza nacho: Diwani ya Hadithi za Watoto [download the PDF]

I’m wondering if there is a Swahili phrase similar to what they use in English for “Support Live Music”. I’ve come up with “saidia muziki wa moja kwa moja” but not sure if the meaning is the same. Thank you.

Mambo!

Do people still speak Kisetla? The only information I can find is this wikipedia article- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settler_Swahili

Asante Sana

Hi there! Firstly thanks for taking the time to read this post, I really appreciate it!

Secondly, I'm currently writing a comic based around a pride of lions. There is a particular scene where a lioness has her first cubs and her pridemates are all congratulating her. Im trying to find a term that the lioness' sister could use as she's congratulating her. Something akin to how you would say "congratulations, darling" or something simpler like just an affectionate word you might use when talking to your sister. I found "Kipenzi", but apparently that's more akin to what a lover would use? So I thought i'd ask people who actually know! Thanks in advance

Where does the stress go on the town name Eldoret? I've heard both patterns here.

Asante!

The game just released and is fully voiced in Swahili. Has anyone played it in Swahili? I was thinking about picking it up to help me learn.

TIA

I notice people saying "asanti" (at least in Eldoret). Is that regional or does it carry a different meaning than "asante?" What drives the variation? Asanti!

Do you use this word for beating someone with your hand or stick ?

I noticed that my nonprofit website has users from East Africa. I want to help them use my website. Where can I find volunteer who speaks Swahili to help with Google translation checking? Has anybody encountered a similar experience?

Habari everyone :)

I recently started learning Swahili on Duolingo, and a couple of similar words were introduced without any explanation, so I was hoping someone would explain the meaning and usage of each one :)

These include words beginning with Ume, such as umeshindaje, umelelake, and uneamkaje.

There’s also the -jambo family, such as hajambo, hatujambo, etc.

Another thing I’m unclear about is when to use “ya” instead of “za” to denote “the”?

And are “nzuri” and “safi” interchangeable when meaning good?

Thank you all!!

Hi!

Are there any groups for studying Swahili? I'd love to join a group of people ages 18-30 for learning and speaking Swahili, with natives AND learners involved. I think this would be a great way to learn Swahili, also the way it is spoken around people my age.

I am American, but my family is all from Tanzania, so it would also be cool to meet more Tanzanians, but i'm open to anyone from any country that speaks Swahili!

If you know a group, respond to the post please, so others can see who is interested!

Im already using language transfer, but I learn best with books, and all the reviews for books I've seen haven't been very detailed about the contents. If you learned swahili with a book, what book was it? And please can you tell me a little bit about it.

There's a song 'E mouyo' by Fully Focus ft Sofiya Nzau that has been played on a popular radio in South Africa, for anyone who can could you please help translate.

This banger has me sleepless and I can only move to the sound and would appreciate being one in Spirit with the art in the words.

I tried Google Translate and scourged the Internet best I know how to, to no avail, your help would be sincerely appreciated

My son doesn’t speak swa and we speak English most of the time. Im looking for a Swahili teacher to teach him virtually on a schedule that would be an hour daily (to start with) and increase it as he gets more into it.

I would complement the lessons by using his new vocabulary and working on his tenses with time. Im a native Swahili speaker myself. We live on EAT -7.

I am doing duolingo swahili and it introduced an "anani-" prefix with no explanation. Like ananipa, he is giving me, anafikiri, he is thinking of me. Could anyone give me more info about this? I couldn't find much online.

Specifically, does it apply to other prefixes? unani-? Are there others, like ana-something for she is something of you?

Also - if anyone knows a good online swahili teacher lmk! Particularly under $10/hr. If they're in/near Nairobi that would also be nice. Asante

I'm doing Duolingo (and did take a year of Swahili in school), and I was under the impression that "je" was a simple polar question marker, like Arabic "hal", but then I came across Duo's example "Je, Esther ni jamaa yako kwa upande gani?" It seems like "je" is optional here, but why would it ever be used if there's already a question word "gani" in the sentence? That is, it's not a polar question. What am I missing?

I could imagine swahili being a great language for making palindromes. I would like to see some; where could i find them? How do you say palindrome in swahili? Or do you have some palindrome examples you could tell me?

Kamilisha methali.

Anyone know how I could import a languange like swahili?

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https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/aablfq/til_there_is_a_screen_saver_in_macos_called_word/

I'm using some tapes to learn Swahili that sometimes use -ni or a preposition like katika for places, but sometimes they don't.

I know that you don't put -ni on proper nouns, but the tapes will sometimes use a noun that does take -ni and use it without - and a bit of searching on Google doesn't reveal anything about when you can talk about locations without including some kind of location word.

So here are some sentences with the word hoteli, which I chose because I know you can say hotelini or katika hoteli. Do these sentences sound good or bad:

1. Ninaenda hoteli.
2. Niko hoteli.
3. Nitakula chakula cha mchana hoteli.
4. Nitasafiri kwenda hoteli.

Asante sana!

not like, corn-y, as in mahindi-- but like, someone who does something that's embarrassing to do but they maybe should be embarrassed of it.

Can any native speaker help me with this? It's come up for me a few times and I don't know how to explain it well enough to my native speaker friends to get them to understand what I want to know.

There are many different dialects of Swahili all over East Africa (and Eastern Congo), namely:

1. Kimrima [around Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania]
2. Kimvita [around Mombasa, Kenya]
3. Kiunguja [in Zanzibar and Pemba Islands]
4. Kiamu [around Lamu, Kenya]
5. Kingwana [in south-eastern Congo]
6. Kingazija [Comorian dialect: this dialect is significantly different from the other ones]
7. Kimtang’ata [to the north of Dar-es-Salaam and south of the Kenyan border]

I think that there should be a standardization around a particular dialect (either Lamu or Zanzibar, I'm biased cause they sound nice). A standardization would be helpful too in trying to turn Swahili into a scientific language used for research & advancements.

Hey everyone! I have been doing a bit more reading into Swahili Ajami and wanted to know if it's possible to find a functioning digital Ajami keyboard for Mac and iPhone? I realised its under-documented and efforts only really started in about the early 2000's to preserve Swahili literature in Ajami, but I thought by now there should be some progress on Ajami coming to phones, even if it isn't an official one through Apple of Google, but independently developed.

Also in relation, is anyone here familiar reading Ajami? What are your thoughts on the script, and would you support a revival of its usage?

To drink beer or alcohol: So the way to say this is kunywa pombe? Do people also say kupiga vyombo?

Hi! I’m looking to translate a slang that I’ve been called by a Tanzanian guy ~ he called me a “malpensa” and a “chenga” girl. I know its not a good word, but I’d like to know the literal meaning.