2011

Today was sort of a down day, courtesy of one of winter’s less liked gifts – a cold. A lot of things didn’t get done today, but Swahili is a different story. What better to do when you don’t feel good then to sit down and listen to your audio lessons – mint tea in …

Today I decided to take on, not one, but two new units. Don’t get too excited, they are very closely related and only present a couple of new concepts/phrases. Basically, the new phrases are moving from morning greetings to daytime and evening greetings. So, by the time I am done I should, theoretically, be able …

Learning a new language is full of “Oooopses”. I once told someone I had brought her the town of Kubinka rather than telling her that I had brought her a quart of strawberries. I also told her that I brought her a bag of plates instead of a bag of rags, simply because the words …

Habari za mchana? Well, at least it’s afternoon here! Yesterday was my birthday. No, I’m not going to tell you how old I am…although a lot of you probably already know. Yesterday was also my sister’s birthday. We are not twins but she was born on my second birthday. Interestingly enough, her youngest daughter was …

Jambo! (Hello!) Well, it was kind of hard working Swahili in around the Thanksgiving holiday, but Thanksgiving was wonderful! While I didn’t get to spend much time learning new words, I did get to host a special Thanksgiving brunch at our church for four college students. It was a huge blessing! I am very grateful …

So, after completing the fifteen page introduction to the Swahili course I am – as the title suggests – cross-eyed but happy. I don’t have a lot to report except that tonight my dreams will probably be full of words and phrases like: “affrication” or “voiced labio-dental fricatives” or “apico-alveolar flap”. Sigh. I’m glad that’s …

So this is pretty cool. There are five vowels in Swahili, just like in English. In fact, they are even the same letters, (a,e,i,o,u) though they are pronounced somewhat differently. They are as follows: a Stressed, Father or odd:  Basi   “only”,   Kitabu  “book”                  Unstressed, between father …

Well, today was the first day of the Swahili Challenge!  How did it go? Pretty well, not conquering Africa or anything, but I did get the software downloaded and set up in my computer! That’s progress considering how slow the internet was moving this morning! So, what am I using? Well, I looked into a …