Photo by Will Shirley on Unsplash

Jambo! Hujambo hamjambo?  This week I have been focusing on the words and phrases from my previous post.  As I am trying to practice and really learn the words, I have come across a couple challenges.  The first challenge I have encountered is finding the time to practice the words enough to really know them well and have them stick in my head.  Balancing time for learning Swahili with time needed for other homework is proving more tricky than I thought it would be.  I also don’t have opportunities to use my newfound Swahili with anyone else to really use it in conversation.

The second challenge I am finding is in the actual pronunciation of the words.  Swahili is a fairly easy language to learn as the words are spoken almost exactly as they are spelled.  However, in some words one syllable is emphasized a lot stronger that the others, and often the prominent syllable is not the one I would instinctively do so it throws me off.  I am finding it helpful on the Hello!Jambo, though, as there is an option to listen to the word to hear how it is properly pronounced.

My focus for this next week will be to learn a little bit about the grammar and structure of Swahili as I continue practicing my word list from last week.  I’m hoping to find a pattern or ‘rule’ that will help me know proper enunciation.