Learn some rules relating to where to put the stress in Swahili words
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Gabriella: Hi everyone! Welcome back to SwahiliPod101.com. This is Pronunciation series, lesson 3 - Feeling the "Stress" in Swahili. My name is Gabriella. |
| Medina: Helo, mimi ni Medina. And I’m Medina! In the 1st lesson, you learned how to pronounce the 24 native Swahili consonants. |
| Gabriella: And in the last lesson, you learned the 5 vowels used in the Swahili language. So what are we learning in this lesson? |
| Medina: In this lesson, we’ll tell you about some important pronunciation rules regarding double consonants, changing vowel sounds, and pitch accent. |
Lesson focus |
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| Gabriella: That sounds a bit hard! |
| Medina: Yes, it might, but it’s actually not that hard. It’s not so much a bunch of rules, as it is a heads up about how Swahili is spoken. |
| Gabriella: So you mean we don’t so much need to practice what we learn in this lesson, but pay attention to it when we are learning Swahili. |
| Medina: Exactly. Spoken Swahili is not built on rules so much as it is on guidelines and preference. |
| Gabriella: Alright, let’s start with the double consonants. |
| Medina: Double consonants in Swahili make the pronunciation a little bit harder. This can easily be explained by pitch accent. |
| Gabriella: Yes, Swahili is a pitch accent language. This means that stress is put on different parts of a word to distinguish between seemingly similar words. It also helps the flow of the sentence. |
| Medina: Swahili generally uses three different accent patterns. The stress can go on the first syllable, the second syllable, or the last syllable of a word. |
| Gabriella: This depends heavily on the length of the word. Can we have one example of a double consonant? |
| Medina: Alright, bila means “without”. |
| And billa, with a double -L, which has the same meaning “without”. |
| Gabriella: Can we take a look at them one by one? |
| Medina Sure. The first word, bila, has heavier stress on the initial letters, while billa has its stress on the double -L and what follows it. Most Swahili words with double consonants are derived from Arabic words. Swahili can seem pretty complex this way, but this should not worry you since these words are well understood with a single consonant, and it is in this form that they are found in the dictionary. Besides, there is no distinct rule for guessing a word’s pitch accent, the only way to really learn it properly is by hearing the words pronounced correctly. |
| Gabriella: Fortunately, most of the words with a double consonant are not in common use. It's easier to guess the meaning from the context too. |
| Medina: As you might remember, Swahili only allows a maximum of two consonants in a row. |
| Gabriella: Ah, I see. Now, there's one more thing to know about consonants. The difference between double and single consonant words can sometimes be confusing. |
| Medina: True, so let’s explain with a simple example. |
| Gabriella: All right, go ahead! |
| Medina: We have two words; mara and marra. |
| Gabriella: Both these words could imply a sequence of time such as “immediately” or “sudden.”As we noted ealier, there are two major differences in the way single and double consonants are pronounced. A double consonant is harsher than the single consonant, and more stress is put on it. |
| Medina: The second difference is that the vowel before a double consonant tends to change sound slightly. |
| Gabriella: Right, and that means we can move on to the last part of this lesson. |
| Medina: Vowels have a big role in creating and changing the meanings of words in Swahili. For instance, kunja meaning "fold" becomes kunjua "unfold." The vowel -U has been used to transform the meaning. |
| Gabriella: That's interesting. Earlier we learned that Swahili has adopted some of its words from foreign languages. |
| Medina: This was often done by using vowels to convert the foreign word into a Swahili word. For example skul, a German word for “school”, was changed into skuli through the addition of the vowel -I. |
| Gabriella: Ah I see. I notice it's only the vowel -I that's added. |
| Medina That’s right. This type of loan word retains some of its structure in Swahili. However, there are some foreign words that drop the original end vowel, and adopt a different one. |
| Gabriella: Can you give an example? |
| Medina: A good example is the Persian word pilao, which changed into pilau when we switched the vowel -O into -U. |
| Gabriella: It seems there are quite a lot of foreign words that have been adopted into the Swahili language. |
| Medina: Yes. Swahili is still going through a process of development, and many new foreign words are being introduced. But don’t worry if you don’t get every word right at first. |
| Gabriella: Just listen again until you have our examples down, then go out and find as many Swahili words as possible and try to pronounce them correctly! |
| Medina: Listeners, want to know which SwahiliPod101.com lesson you need to study next? |
| Gabriella: And want to know how much Swahili progress you’ve made so far? |
| Medina: Find out with the SwahiliPod101.com Dashboard! |
| Gabriella: Make sure to add the course you want to track by clicking on “Add Course to Dashboard.” |
| Medina: See your Swahili learning progress and know which lessons to study next! |
Outro |
| Medina: And that’s going to do it for this lesson! |
| Gabriella: Leave us a comment at SwahiliPod101.com if you have any questions about this lesson. Thanks for listening, everyone, and we’ll see you next time! |
| Medina: Kwa heri! |
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