Toolbox Kiswahili
Kiswahili, one week at a time.
Karibu.
A running set of class notes from a beginners’ Kiswahili course, written up week by week and published here as they are finished. They are a learner’s notes, not a textbook — the reasoning, the mistakes and the questions asked in the room are part of what gets written down.
Swahili is the working language of much of East Africa, and SEESALT’s programmes run where it is spoken. Learning it is not a side project.
The notes
Published as each week is finished.
- Note 01 Sounds, greetings, and the shape of a word The five vowels and every consonant; noun classes; the verb as a train of prefixes; the full introductions dialogue. 2 & 3 Sept 2026
- Note 02 In preparation More tenses, noun classes in use, and the number system. —
How to use them
Read the grammar, then say the dialogue out loud.
Each note follows the same shape: what was taught, then the tables to refer back to, then a short set of drills with the answers hidden until you want them. Nothing here needs to be memorised in order — the vocabulary lists at the end of each note are the part worth returning to.
From Note 02 onward each section carries an English gloss beneath the Chinese, so the notes can be read in either language.
Three things that make it easier than it looks
- No tones.
- No grammatical gender, and no case endings.
- Spelling and pronunciation match, one letter to one sound.
And one thing that makes it harder: every noun belongs to a class, and the words around it change shape to agree. That is the whole difficulty, and it is covered in Note 01.
Corrections welcome.
These are notes taken by a student, checked against the handouts but not by a linguist. If you speak Kiswahili and something here is wrong, or right but not how anyone actually says it, please write — corrections are credited on the note they fix.