Learn more about the top five mistakes people make when learning Swahili pronunciation
Now Playing: Lesson Audio
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| INTRODUCTION |
| Gabriella: Hi everyone, and welcome back to SwahiliPod101.com. This is Pronunciation Series, lesson 5, Common Swahili Pronunciation Mistakes. My name is Gabriella. |
| Medina: And I'm Medina. Well, we’ve reached the last lesson of the series! |
| Gabriella: That’s right! You’ve come such a long way, listeners! In this lesson, you’ll learn another important aspect of Swahili pronunciation. |
| Medina: Yes, in this lesson, we’ll be going over the top five pronunciation mistakes in Swahili. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Gabriella: It’s important that you are familiar with them, so that you can minimize them when you speak. So what’s our first one, Medina? |
| Medina: Tip number 1 is remember to trill your -R's! Remember that in Swahili, the letter -R is not pronounced in the same way as it is in English. |
| Gabriella: Yeah, that’s right—you don’t want to end up sticking out like a sore thumb. And one of the ways that people can detect a foreign accent over the phone is by the way you pronounce this particular sound. |
| Medina: Let’s say you want some "tickets” to the cinema. You need to say the word for "ticket" as risiti not “lisiti” (wrong pronunciation). But if you aren’t that steady on the trilling -R, you can use the word “rarua” meaning ‘tear’ in Swahili to help you get used to the “r” sounds. |
| Gabriella: The French sounding -R R might be hard for some speakers, but easier for others. |
| Medina: Try for example to pronounce rembo which means “beautiful”. |
| Gabriella: Okay, so what’s our next pronunciation tip? |
| Medina: Tip number 2 is to use the correct vowels! |
| Gabriella: Right! A common mistake foreigners make is that they apply their native vowel sounds to their Swahili pronunciation. |
| Medina: So make sure you practice the Swahili vowels extra hard. Because it's very unfortunate if you end up pronouncing keki like... |
| Gabriella: "cake?" |
| Medina: Exactly! There are numerous Swahili words that are spelled or look similar to English. Their meanings are often the same too. |
| Gabriella: To avoid this, remember to pronounce every syllable in the word. |
| Medina: Tip number 3 is to mind your consonants! |
| Gabriella: Yeah, be careful with tricky consonant combinations. |
| Medina: Swahili combines some consonants in a way that's not found in English. |
| Gabriella: For example, many words in Swahili start with the letter -M, which is combined with other consonants such as -W, -B, or -T |
| Medina: Examples include...mwana |
| Gabriella: “child” |
| Medina: mbwa |
| Gabriella: "dog" |
| Medina: mti |
| Gabriella: “tree”. These consonant clusters will be unfamiliar to native English speakers. So it's an important point to note. |
| Medina: Ok, what’s the next tip we have? |
| Gabriella: Tip number 4 is learn to be comfortable with non-native sounds now! |
| Medina: Remember that Swahili has many sounds that simply do not exist in the English language, and that's a problem for most English speakers learning Swahili. |
| Gabriella: Right. It might take a lot of practice before you manage to pronounce some of these words correctly. |
| Medina: Even some native speakers might have problems pronouncing some of them naturally. |
| Gabriella: So it's very important that you practice the sounds that aren’t familiar to you. |
| Medina: Yeah, for example, the sound ng like in the word ngano. Or the nd in ndamu. |
| Gabriella: I’m not sure all our listeners can actually hear the difference though. To be clear, there are five different consonant clusters that contain -N in Swahili, and three that contain -H. Let's hear some examples of these sounds in words, starting with the cluster -ND. |
| Medina: As I said, nd is used in the word ndama, nd-ama [break it down] |
| Gabriella: This means "calf". Next is the cluster -NG |
| Medina: ng is used in the word ngano |
| Gabriella: "millet flour". Then we have -NG plus apostrophe... |
| Medina: ng' is used in the word ng’ombe |
| Gabriella: "cow." Next is the cluster -NJ |
| Medina: nj is used in the word njaa |
| Gabriella: "hunger." Then we have the cluster -NY |
| Medina: ny is used in the word nyanya |
| Gabriella: "tomatoes." Next is the cluster -CH |
| Medina: ch is used in the word chakula |
| Gabriella: "food." Then we have the cluster -DH. |
| Medina: dh is used in the word dhahabu |
| Gabriella: "gold." And last is -TH. |
| Medina: th is used in the word Thamani |
| Gabriella: meaning "valuable." |
| Medina: Right. Other than these sounds we also have mb sounds from a cluster of the letters -MB. |
| Gabriella: Can you give us an example? |
| Medina: A word in this category is mbogo, "a buffalo." |
| Gabriella: Yes, so what's the last tip we have for everyone? |
| Medina: Tip number 5 is to watch out for similar sounding words! |
| Gabriella: Now this could happen in any language, but Swahili is full of seemingly identical words. Paired with pitch accent, it makes it nearly impossible to know how to pronounce a word correctly without having heard it first. |
| Medina: That’s right. |
| Gabriella: What are some examples? |
| Medina: One example is bure and bure. |
| Gabriella: They sound really similar…so what do they mean? |
| Medina: Bure means “free,” and bure means “useless.” But actually...there’s no difference in how they are pronounced. |
| Gabriella: Oh, so that was a joke? |
| Medina: Well, there's no big difference even in the pitch accent, but the context will tell you the meaning. Even the emphasis of the word can send the point home. |
| Gabriella: All right, well that was our top 5 tips for avoiding pronunciation mistakes in Swahili! |
| Medina: Remember to keep practicing! |
| Gabriella: We can’t stress this enough. Listening and repeating is the quickest way to get these sounds down. |
| Medina: Well, that’s it for this lesson and this series. |
Outro |
| Gabriella: We hope we’ve given you a good introduction to Swahili language and culture! Remember to leave a comment if you have any questions about this series. |
| Medina: Thanks for listening! |
| Gabriella: And we’ll see you again in another series! Bye! |
| Medina: Kwaheri! |
Comments
Hide