ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby Set » 2014-01-22, 22:16

Nice to see you studying Swahili again. Seems like you're liking the book. I really miss studying from it, definitely one of the best language books I've ever used. Anyway, good luck with it :wink:
Native:[flag=]en[/flag] Good:[flag=]de[/flag][flag=]ca[/flag] Focusing on:[flag=]fa[/flag][flag=]ku[/flag][flag=]ps[/flag] Interested in:[flag=]zza[/flag][flag=]tr[/flag][flag=]sw[/flag]

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby ceid donn » 2014-01-22, 23:56

Asante, Set. :D I really like it, although it is pretty dense. It throws a lot of vocabulary at you and I have trouble remembering it all. I've been sitting here for about an hour trying to write a short pargragh with the stuff I've coveed from chapters 1-20, but I keep having to go through the chapters to remember what vocabulary the book has covered so far. There's just so much! :P

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby Set » 2014-01-23, 17:53

That's true. I always tried to anki all the vocab from those vocab chapters before moving on to the next chapter.
Actually one thing that did annoy me about the book was that the exercises towards the end, especially the last ones, only had one solution in the back which was pretty annoying because there were a few different ways of writing a text in Swahili, but you couldn't know if what you'd written was true unless you wrote it exactly the same way as the book. Anyway, I was able to read simple news articles (with a little dictionary help) after finishing the book, so I think it does leave you in good stead.

Btw after SS I bought 'Masomo ya Kisasa' which is good, but I never really go into it since not long after that I came to Kurdistan. You might like it though.
Native:[flag=]en[/flag] Good:[flag=]de[/flag][flag=]ca[/flag] Focusing on:[flag=]fa[/flag][flag=]ku[/flag][flag=]ps[/flag] Interested in:[flag=]zza[/flag][flag=]tr[/flag][flag=]sw[/flag]

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby ceid donn » 2014-01-23, 18:33

I'm using Quizlet, although I've worked up to lesson 20 and I've only made flashard up to lesson 11. I'm a little behind but I was eager to get on with writing something, so I've lagged a bit on flashcards. I always retain stuff better if I start writing and using the words in context. I can learn a list of wrods in a few minutes, but that doesn't mean I can recall those words in the context of writing. Even then I'm like "OK, the word for 'to cook' was in the first verbs list, it came after the word 'to beat' which is 'kupiga' and is one letter different--ok, got it: 'kupika'" until it becomes more natural and I can just recall the word without "reading" through lists in my head. :P

It doesn't surprise me that this book has that limitation. That kind of thing--learning to write more in more nuanced styles in a language--is hard to get into a book. But as long s I can learn to write and read conherently I'll be happy. And thanks for the rec Masomo ya Kisasa--I'll definitnely keep that in mind if I ever get that far along!

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby ceid donn » 2014-01-23, 21:11

Forgot to mention a couple of things:

Yesterday I took a little break from book study to work on some listening, so I watched about half of this movie and tried to pick out words I knew--I'll try to watch the rest later:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zSkKwytELE

I was able to find some files for listening although I don't have any accompanying texts for the text readings: http://faculty.virginia.edu/swahililang ... ening.html I downloaded and have listened t the first two. And I listen to Jambo Bwana a few times so now I have it stuk in my head. :P

I can't find the link right now but I found some other free audio files on some weird language learning site that were English to Swahili, but the first set where things like "Stop or I'll shot", "Follow our orders" and "Put down your weapon" :shock: Not exactly what I was looking for. Must be some leaked training files for US military or private secuirty contractors (the Engish speakers had an American accent).

I also found some .pdf lessons from a seemingly defunk uni Swahili class at the U of Kansas--65 .pdfs that I downloaded individually and now have to rename so I can search through them as I couldn't access the index for them online (I think the index has been removed even though the .pdfs themselves are still up and can be accessed directly by their web addys). A lot of word lists by topic (family, sports, food, etc.), but also many lessons on grammar--that's how I learned the habitual tense and was able to correct my recent posts before someone else caught that mistake. :mrgreen: (Granted I fully expect there'll be other mistakes.)

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby ceid donn » 2014-01-24, 15:04

vijayjohn wrote: ceid donn wrote: [flag=]sw[/flag] Mimi hucheza gitaa, lute na piano na mimi ni mwimbaji pia. Nilipokuwa mdogo, nilicheza cklarineti na viola. Nilisoma muziki katika chuo kikuu na nina shahada katika muziki. Mimi hucheza muziki wa Kimarekani wa "jazz" na muziki kizungu "classical" wa klasiki wa Ulaya :?: kwa kawaida. Mimi hupenda muziki nyingine pia .

[flag=]en-us[/flag] I play guitar, lute and piano and I am a singer too. When I was younger I played clarinet and viola. I studied music at university and I have a degree in music. I play American jazz music and European classical music usually. I love other music too.


Asante, vilayjohn. :P I moved this from the Please post your message bilingually! thread so I can discuss it without hijacking that thread. :wink:

OK, I knew I was botching something up by not using the linking possessive -A partitive. I just figured out this morning where that is in SS. Also there's a .pdf on it in the KU (Uni of Kansas) .pdfs I downloaded yesterday. In SS it's in chapter 29, hence why I haven't learned it yet. :lol: In the .pdfs it's way near the end too--like lesson 54 or so. I don't know why they didn't think it's something we would need to learn sooner. :? Anyhow, I will look at those things today and make corrections to my other post in the Kiswahili conversation thread.

Where did you find klarineti? I looked everywhere I knew of online. I did find udi for lute, but i play an European lute, and I believe udi probably refers to the Arabic oud from which the European lute descends from, yet the styles of music and construction specifics between ouds and lutes are very distinct from one another, so I stuck with lute.

Lots of times when we say "classical music" it's assumed that it's European, but that's rather Euro-centric and disrespectful for how other cultures like India, China, Japan, Iran, etc. have their own classical traditions. So as long as I can distinguish that I'm talking about European music I'm OK. Muziki wa klasiki wa Ulaya (I couldn't find the word for Europe for some reason when I wrote that, but now I'll know!) seems clear enough. I dug around online and wasn't able to find an exact match to that phrase in use by Swahili speakers but that may simply been because that music isn't a big topic of discussion for them. :)

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-02-02, 22:50

ceid donn wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Unaomba kuzungumza kwa Kiswahili? :P


Ok, I'm not sure what you mean here. :oops: "Do you hope to converse is Swahili"?

I'm pretty sure kuomba can also mean 'to want'. :wink: It's entirely possible that that was still a mistake on my part, though.

I've been meaning post something there. but I'm terrible with coming up with random stuff to talk about especially when my skills in that language are so limited. I'll try to come up with something. :P

Yeah, thanks for doing that! Sorry I took so long and couldn't come up with all that much to say myself. Oh well, at least I can try to start a conversation on that thread. :lol:

I tried to learn Vietnames and Gaelic at the same time but failed miseribly at both. When I got up the nerve to try Gaelic again I studied it exclusively for a couple of years and then, I don't know, I went crazy or something. Now I can't help myself! :mrgreen:

You know what, I did something a bit like that, except I did Thai instead of Gaelic. (I think that was because I had started seeing this Thai lady every time I needed a haircut). I don't know whether this is a thing in the school where you teach, but at least when I was in middle school, we had "study hall" periods where we were supposed to read or do our homework. Anyway, if I didn't have any homework to do (or just didn't feel like doing it :P), I used the time to literally hold TY Thai open with one hand and TY Vietnamese with the other. Then I'd learn a little bit of Thai, then a little bit of Vietnamese, then a little more Thai...:lol: I didn't get very far with Vietnamese, but I did manage to finish TY Thai. Unfortunately, I've been very slow to realize how little these TY books actually teach you. At least, TY Thai doesn't teach you all that much - basically just enough to kind of "get by," I guess.

Asante, vilayjohn. :P

Karibu! :wink: And you can call me Vijay. :)

Anyhow, I will look at those things today and make corrections to my other post in the Kiswahili conversation thread.

Oooops. :shock: I forgot about this when I made corrections to your post earlier today. I can delete them if you want.

Where did you find klarineti? I looked everywhere I knew of online.

This article has the words wapiga klarineti in it. :P

I did find udi for lute, but i play an European lute, and I believe udi probably refers to the Arabic oud from which the European lute descends from, yet the styles of music and construction specifics between ouds and lutes are very distinct from one another, so I stuck with lute.

Yeah, that's pretty much why I didn't change lute to udi, either. :lol:

Lots of times when we say "classical music" it's assumed that it's European, but that's rather Euro-centric and disrespectful for how other cultures like India, China, Japan, Iran, etc. have their own classical traditions. So as long as I can distinguish that I'm talking about European music I'm OK. Muziki wa klasiki wa Ulaya (I couldn't find the word for Europe for some reason when I wrote that, but now I'll know!) seems clear enough. I dug around online and wasn't able to find an exact match to that phrase in use by Swahili speakers but that may simply been because that music isn't a big topic of discussion for them. :)

Yeah, that may be why. :) Whenever they do talk about muziki wa klasiki, I think they're basically talking about European classical music anyway. In any case, I'd think the closest thing to that in East Africa was like taarab or something.

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby ceid donn » 2014-02-04, 17:00

First, I apologize for mispelling your name, vijay. I try not to do that to other people as everyone IRL does that to me. :)

Don't worry about the corrections. I was wanting to do it myself but I've been sick so I haven't been able to spend a lot of time on my laptop (in fact i'm goign to need to lay back down again soon). Besides I can always write more mistakes. :lol:

I can't find anything that explains how ku-omba can mean to want, although it seems it is most commonly translated as to ask, and in many languages, to ask and to want can be expressed with the same verb.

vijayjohn wrote:You know what, I did something a bit like that, except I did Thai instead of Gaelic. (I think that was because I had started seeing this Thai lady every time I needed a haircut). I don't know whether this is a thing in the school where you teach, but at least when I was in middle school, we had "study hall" periods where we were supposed to read or do our homework. Anyway, if I didn't have any homework to do (or just didn't feel like doing it :P), I used the time to literally hold TY Thai open with one hand and TY Vietnamese with the other. Then I'd learn a little bit of Thai, then a little bit of Vietnamese, then a little more Thai...:lol: I didn't get very far with Vietnamese, but I did manage to finish TY Thai. Unfortunately, I've been very slow to realize how little these TY books actually teach you. At least, TY Thai doesn't teach you all that much - basically just enough to kind of "get by," I guess.


I've used many TY books and some are definitely better than others. Some are just horrible (I'm looking at you, TY Complete French). :lol: But most of them really don't try to get you past a B1 level. I think when they originally designed these series they intended to have a second more advancced text, but for the most of the languages they never realized that, only for German, Italian, French Spanish and maybe a couple of others (these were the "Improve Your..." series, now called "Perfect Your...").

Anyhow, I'm going to have to get offline now and rest but hoepfully I'll be back to writing some Swahili in the forum soon. :D

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby ceid donn » 2014-02-09, 4:44

Two quick questions for anyone who can answer them:

The dicitonary says lugha ya kigeni is "a foreign language", so to say "in a foreign language" where do I put the -ni? Lughani ya kigani?

And my text only gives ku-penda for "to like", but as far as I can tell, it's mostly used to say someone loves someone else. Is it OK to use it when talking about an activity you enjoy, or is there another way of saying that?

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby ceid donn » 2014-02-14, 23:55

Due to illness and wanting to finish up with Duolingo, my progress has been slow as of late. I'm up to Chapter 33, which is another noun class chapter and has a ton of vocabulary. So I'll be spending a little extra time on that. One of the problems with Simplified Swahili is that it gives you way too much vocabulary than you can possibly assimilate at your level, and it's hard to know what words are more important to know.

I am starting to read some real world Swahili, although it's pretty challenging with my limited vocablary, mostly stuff from BBC Swahili and articles tweeted by Swahili Hub. Hopefully when I'm feeling better I can start writing more.

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby modus.irrealis » 2014-02-18, 9:21

ceid donn wrote:The dicitonary says lugha ya kigeni is "a foreign language", so to say "in a foreign language" where do I put the -ni? Lughani ya kigani?

I would like to know this too. I had a really frustrating time trying to find an answer to this question, but I couldn't find anything...

And my text only gives ku-penda for "to like", but as far as I can tell, it's mostly used to say someone loves someone else. Is it OK to use it when talking about an activity you enjoy, or is there another way of saying that?

A phrase book I have has the example "I like going for walks" = "Napenda kwenda kutembea".

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby ceid donn » 2014-02-18, 14:55

modus.irrealis wrote:I would like to know this too. I had a really frustrating time trying to find an answer to this question, but I couldn't find anything...

I'm going to try posting this question on Lang-8 this week and see if anyone there will help. There are a few Swahili speakers there but I don't know how active they are at the site.

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby vijayjohn » 2014-02-19, 1:15

ceid donn wrote:First, I apologize for mispelling your name, vijay. I try not to do that to other people as everyone IRL does that to me. :)

No problem! People butcher my name in all sorts of ways (not so much here as in real life), but I'm used to it, so it's OK AFAIC. :lol:

Don't worry about the corrections. I was wanting to do it myself but I've been sick so I haven't been able to spend a lot of time on my laptop (in fact i'm goign to need to lay back down again soon). Besides I can always write more mistakes. :lol:

OK, thanks!

I can't find anything that explains how ku-omba can mean to want, although it seems it is most commonly translated as to ask, and in many languages, to ask and to want can be expressed with the same verb.

Well, here's an example from TY Swahili: Naomba stampu kwa barua hizi, kwenda Uingereza kwa ndege. 'I want stamps for these letters going to England by air.'

I've used many TY books and some are definitely better than others. Some are just horrible (I'm looking at you, TY Complete French). :lol:

Huh. (If you want a good book for French, I'd actually recommend TY Business French, however boring that may sound. :lol: Covers lots of vocabulary and some finer grammar points but it starts with really basic stuff like bonjour).

The dicitonary says lugha ya kigeni is "a foreign language", so to say "in a foreign language" where do I put the -ni? Lughani ya kigani?

You don't. :wink: You say kwa lugha ya kigeni, just like you'd say kwa Kiswahili and not *Kiswahilini for 'in Swahili'. The choice of adpositions (pre- and postpositions) is pretty arbitrary in languages and varies from one to another. In English, you use "in" with a language; in Swahili, you use something like "by"; in German, you use "on" (auf).

And my text only gives ku-penda for "to like", but as far as I can tell, it's mostly used to say someone loves someone else. Is it OK to use it when talking about an activity you enjoy, or is there another way of saying that?

Yes, it does mean 'to like', not only 'to love', so it can be used for talking about an activity you enjoy or even to mean 'to want'. (Clearly, there are at least three ways to say 'to want'! :D). The first sentence in TY Swahili that uses this verb is in a conversation where somebody is trying to get a hotel room, and he's saying that he'd prefer one floor to another. He says, "Sipendi ghorofa ya juu. Mimi napenda ghorofa ya kwanza." ("I don't like the top floor. I like the first floor.").

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby Set » 2014-02-24, 23:07

Wasn't sure where to post this link, but then considering almost all Swahili discussion seems to be going on here and I think it will benefit you ceid donn, here is a slightly old (1967) but free to download Swahili-English dictionary from Dunwoody press: http://www.dunwoodypress.com/148/PDF/CRW6_Rechenbach-Swahili.pdf
Native:[flag=]en[/flag] Good:[flag=]de[/flag][flag=]ca[/flag] Focusing on:[flag=]fa[/flag][flag=]ku[/flag][flag=]ps[/flag] Interested in:[flag=]zza[/flag][flag=]tr[/flag][flag=]sw[/flag]

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby Antea » 2015-08-23, 15:58

Sorry, what s the author of this book "simplified swahili" that you re learning from? I'm beginning with swahili and I only have the Assimil method, which is OK, but not very much grammar in it

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby ceid donn » 2015-10-26, 4:13

Antea wrote:Sorry, what s the author of this book "simplified swahili" that you re learning from? I'm beginning with swahili and I only have the Assimil method, which is OK, but not very much grammar in it


It's SImplified Swahili by Peter M. Wilson. Sadly I had to stop studying Swahili a while back, but I do miss it. It's a wonderful language.

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby Antea » 2015-10-26, 6:10

ceid donn wrote:It's SImplified Swahili by Peter M. Wilson.


Thank you. I had already found it by searching the internet and it had really good reviews from the users. I bought it last month and I'm studying now with it. I like pretty much swahili, but it's also a difficult language (mainly cause of its grammar). Vocabulary it's a little bit easier for me as I studied arabic and it has many similar words. Anyway, it's going to be a long journey :roll:

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby ceid donn » 2015-10-26, 20:01

Antea wrote:
Thank you. I had already found it by searching the internet and it had really good reviews from the users. I bought it last month and I'm studying now with it. I like pretty much swahili, but it's also a difficult language (mainly cause of its grammar). Vocabulary it's a little bit easier for me as I studied arabic and it has many similar words. Anyway, it's going to be a long journey :roll:

How far along in the book are you? Yeah, Swahili grammar is a little tricky, especially the noun cases which drove me crazy. But if you are interested in any other Bantu languages, the grammar is pretty much the same for all of them, so that's a bonus. And yeah, knowing some Arabic is helpful. :)

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Re: ceid donn - Kiswahili thread

Postby Antea » 2015-10-28, 5:26

ceid donn wrote:How far along in the book are you?


I'm beginning chapter 40 (the subjunctive). But I must say that first I'm looking through the book, reading fast in order to have a global vision of the language structure. I studied first with Assimil, which is a more conversational method, and I just couldn't grasp the grammatical structure of the language. I felt that the grammar explanations they gave were not enough for this complex language, so I needed something more.

Now it is all much more clear, but I will have to review it thoroughly. Unfortunately I got caught up with something else and I don't have now much time to study, but I hope next week I could go back to my book :D


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