Learn the writing system
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Joshua: Hello everyone, I’m Joshua and welcome back to SwahiliPod101.com. |
| Medina: Hi everyone, I’m Medina. |
| Joshua: This is All About, Lesson 2, Cracking the Swahili Writing System. In this lesson, Medina and I are going to explain a little bit about the Swahili writing system. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Medina: That's right! We are going to cover lots of things in this lesson. |
| Joshua: Let's start with the alphabet. |
| Medina: Sure. The Swahili alphabet is easy to learn because it’s more or less the same alphabet as English. |
| Joshua: And knowing the basics of the Swahili alphabet is a huge step in learning Swahili, because it's a phonetic language. |
| Medina: That means the letters and the sounds they make are always the same. So, if you know the letters and the sounds, then not only can you speak it, but you can also read it. |
| Joshua: But, don't be fooled. The written language has become a bit old, and the pronunciation is not always as easy as you might think. |
| Medina: So that's why we're here. To teach you how to pronounce correctly! |
| Joshua: That's right! Don't worry. Swahili is not that hard, especially for fluent English speakers. |
| Medina: Yes, Swahili sometimes sounds almost the same as English. But we'll go over the pronunciation of each letter and the rules for spelling in our pronunciation series. |
| Joshua: That's right. For now, we'll just give you the big picture. |
| Medina: Sounds great. |
| Joshua: So, the Swahili alphabet consists of five vowels and thirty-two consonants, almost like English. |
| Medina: Swahili borrows its words from a number of languages, including English. |
| Joshua: Similar-looking words with similar meanings are called cognates. For example, “bag” - ‘begi’, and "party" - ‘pati’ are Swahili-English and English–Swahili cognates respectively. |
| Medina: So, another benefit to learning the Swahili writing system is that if you know Swahili, then Arabic, Persian, German, Portuguese, and French will be easier to read and listen to, because they share some common vocabulary. |
| Joshua: That's right. Arabic is very easy to understand because to a Swahili speaker, Arabic sounds like a dialect of Swahili. It is a little harder to read because the writing system is quite different, but after about two weeks of listening to ArabicPod101.com, you can pick out some Swahili words from an Arabic conversation. |
| Medina: Yeah. But, despite the common roots, Arabic pronunciation is more complicated than Swahili pronunciation. |
Outro |
| Joshua: Ok, there you have it - the big picture on the Swahili writing system. |
| Medina: So please, join us to learn more about it in the next lesson here at SwahiliPod101.com! |
| Joshua: Bye everyone! |
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