Swahili Made Easy: A Beginner's Complete Course

LESSON 1. THE SWAHILI PRONUNCIATION

2 SWAHILI MADE EASY LESSON 1 THE SWAHILI PRONUNCIATION It is not difficult to pronounce Swahili if one observes the following rules: All consonants, except G, have the same sounds as in English.The Swahili F is always pronounced as the English f in “fit” “fair” it is never pronounced as the f “of” which sounds like the Swahili v. G is always hard, as in English, “go”, “good”. S is always pronounced like the s in “soft,” and never like the s in “visit”. Two consonants are sometimes used to produce one sound thus: CH has the same sound as in English , “change”, “check”. DH sounds like the th in “father”, “feather”. SH has the same sound as the word, “shake”. TH sounds something like the sound in “thin”, “think”. The sounds dh and th are Arabic and many good Swahili speakers find them difficult to pronounce.They often say z and s for dh and th respe ctively. A few words give trouble even to SwahiIi-speakers. They are: ghali, “expensive”, ghafula, “suddenly”, lugha, “language”, gharama, “expenses”, etc. Some pronounce these words as if they were written with a hard g while others try to retain the Arabic guttural sound gh. Swahili has five vowels. PART ONE 3 They are: a, e, i, o, u. Each vowel has only one sound. a is always like the a in “ father”; e.g. baba, “father”. e is always like the e in “weigh”; e. g. wewe, “ you”. i is always like the ee in “see”; e.g. sisi, “we”. o is always like the aw in “law”; e.g. soko, “market “. u is always like the oo in “cook”; e.g. kuku, “hen”. The vowels are sometimes used together like this:saa,“watch,hour”; taa, “lamp” etc. Each vowel must be pronounced distinctly because they belong to different words; e.g. kufa, “to die”, is distinguished from kufaa “to be useful,” by the doubling of the final a. So, too, kukata, “to cut”, and kukataa “to refuse”; kuku, “hen”, and kukuu, “old, ancient”. These words are further distinguished by the accent which falls on different syllables according to the rule given below. The Swahili accent is constant and falls on the second to last syllable: e.g. Kitabu, “book”, Kiswahili, etc. There is only one exception to this rule, the word barabara, “exactly”, which has the accent on the third from last syllable. This distinguishes it from another word with the same spelling: baraba’ra, “road” which has the usual accent on the second from last syllable. ...