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| INTRODUCTION |
| Medina: Hi everyone! Welcome back to SwahiliPod101.com! I’m Medina. |
| Joshua: And I’m Joshua. This is All About, Lesson 4 - Swahili Pronunciation Made Easy. In this lesson, we'll show you how easy it is to start speaking Swahili. |
| Medina: And that's because we’ll be focusing on pronunciation. |
| Joshua: Believe it or not, pronunciation is one of the easiest aspects of Swahili. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Medina: That's right. In this lesson, we'll show you just how easy it is, and give you tips on how to perfect |
| your pronunciation. |
| Joshua: Compared to many other languages, Swahili is a relatively easy language to speak. |
| Medina: There are a few sounds that might be difficult, but almost every sound in Swahili is used every day in English. |
| Joshua: That means you already know how to say it! |
| Medina: Swahili also follows many of the same intonation patterns as English. Although, it might sound like singing. |
| Joshua: So, let's recap the written system quickly - just as an introduction to the pronunciation. |
| Medina: The Swahili alphabet is almost the same as the English alphabet - it has thirty-two letters with five vowels. |
| Joshua: Let's take a closer look at the vowels. |
| (The five vowels) |
| Joshua: So here’s what we want you to do. No matter where you are, no matter if you're at home, on the subway, in your car, wherever…we want you to talk to yourself. |
| Medina: You might get some weird looks, but don't worry. It's for a good cause! |
| Joshua: You're going to repeat after the vowels that Medina will say. Sound good? |
| Medina: Okay. The Swahili letter ‘-a’ is pronounced like the [a] in… |
| Joshua: "Car." |
| Medina: The word for "bar" is ‘baa’ (pause). |
| Medina: The Swahili letter ‘-e’ is pronounced like the [e] in… |
| Joshua: "Get." |
| Medina: The word for "bag" is ‘begi’ (pause), the word for "radio" is ‘redio’ (pause) |
| Medina: The Swahili letter ‘-i’ is pronounced like the [i] in… |
| Joshua: "Ski". |
| Medina: The word for "protect" is ‘linda’ (pause) and the word for "way" is ‘njia’ (pause) |
| Medina: The Swahili letter ‘-o’ is pronounced similar to the [oo] in |
| Joshua: "owl." |
| Medina: The word for "any" is ‘lolote’ (pause), and the word for "dream" is ‘ota.’ (pause) |
| Medina: The Swahili letter "-u" is pronounced like the [u] in |
| Joshua: "Flu" or "rule." |
| Medina: The word for "that" is ‘ule’ (pause), and "good" is ‘uzuri’ (pause). |
| (Consonants) |
| Joshua: Alright, now let’s talk about the consonants next. |
| Medina: All the consonants? |
| Joshua: No. Just some of the more unique ones. We’ll go through all the consonants in our pronunciation series. |
| Medina: Which is designed to help you master Swahili pronunciation in just five lessons! |
| Joshua: But for now, let's just look at ‘dh’, ‘gh’, ng’, ‘sh’, and ‘th’. |
| Medina: ‘dh, gh, ng’, sh, th,’ These sounds in Swahili are unique. |
| Joshua: They sure are. In fact some of them don’t even exist in English. But, you shouldn’t worry about that, since we’ll be looking at them in detail in the next few lessons. |
| Medina-: Alright, so let’s look at them briefly. First up is (DH). |
| Joshua: The ‘dh’ sounds like the English, “the”. |
| Medina: Could you give us an example? |
| Joshua: Sure. For example, “gold” is pronounced ‘dhahabu’ (pause). |
| Joshua: Next is (GH) |
| Medina: This is an interesting sound that’s slightly different from ‘dh’. ‘Gh’ sounds like the “ga” in “gabbler”. |
| Joshua: The ‘ha’ sound should slightly be felt in the pronunciation. Let’s take for example the English word “expensive” |
| Medina: This is pronounced as ‘ghali’ (pause). Next up is |
| (NG’) |
| Joshua: It’s tricky to find the sound of this consonant in English, but you can figure out the sound from the pronunciation of the “g” in “nag.” An example in Swahili is ‘ng’ombe’ for “cow.” |
| Medina: Next is (SH). This may sound familiar to English speakers. You copy its pronunciation from the English, “she.” |
| Joshua: In Swahili we have ‘sheria’ for “rule.” Alright, and to finish things off is (TH). |
| Medina: This one is also simple. Borrow the “th” in the word “lithe.” |
| Joshua: A good example will be ‘thamani’, which means “valuable”. |
| Medina: Did you hear how they all sound different? Don’t worry if you didn’t though, we’ll go into more detail in our Pronunciation series. |
Outro |
| Joshua: Alright, and that's everything for this lesson! |
| Medina: Keep in mind that listening and repeating is really the key to improving your pronunciation. |
| Joshua: Listen to and copy native speakers as much as you can. |
| Medina: And please join us for the next lesson. |
| Joshua: Thanks everyone, see you next time! |
| Medina: Bye. |
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