Teach Yourself Swahili

"Teach Yourself Swahili" by D.V. Perrott is going to become our new best friend! The author says, "Swahili is an easy language. There are no real difficulties of pronunciation and none of spelling. The reader will find that it is indeed possible to teach himself (and hopefully herself) Swahili with this book." Joy Feser obtained this book for us and assures us that is true! So, we will teach ourselves over the next 5 months and when we arrive in Tanzania Joy will be our language tutor.

We are also using a computer program called Rosetta Stone. This program is very helpful as you hear the language being spoken and have the opportunity to speak it back into the computer and have your pronunciation assessed.

A couple of basic things to wrap our heads around:
1. In Swahili changes to nouns come at the beginning instead of at the end as in English.
2. The order of the words in a sentence is the reverse of their order in English.

So far I can say:
1. kibanda kimoja na vyumba vinne (one hut and four rooms)
2. kitanda kirefu na kiti kikubwa (a long bed and a large chair)
3. vikombe vinne na vijiko (four cups and spoons)