learn Swahili

What better place to start than by learning what the names of those familiar Lion King characters mean? Almost all of the Disney characters have names that are simply a Swahili word. Check out the translations:

Simba means Lion
Pumbaa means Foolish One
Rafiki means Friend
Sarabi means Mirage
Shenzi means Savage

and for those of you who have seen the Lion King II:

Kovu means Scar
Zira means Hatred
Nuka means Stink
Vitani – a play on Shetani (She-demon) Vita means War.

I’ll never look at Disney the same way.

I’m not entirely sure why I want to do this. I think a fascination with African culture and an overzealous Social Studies teacher may be to blame… Now the question is…where do I start?

Have been reviewing the cards about once or twice a week. Its actually starting to stick! What a neat language!

So excited I will be leaving for Kenya in just over a week. Well, I will never be fluent but I’m looking forward to picking up some phrases when I get there next week.

Jambo = hello that’s all I’ve got for now :)

Completed! Found awesome website to make some flash cards from. (i did this today) www.glcom.com/hassan/lessons/useful_swahili_words.html
Will begin reviewing over the week. Have 2 more potential websites to move on to after mastering most of the cards.

Step 2 will be trying to find children’s books in Swahili or newspapers… I expect this to be a challenge but I haven’t looked yet.

Mostly we pick languages to learn randomly and this one just sounds cool! Makes sense to learn french, it’s the other international language, so I want to learn one for no particular reason. ;-)

Hujambo!

Want to visit (possibly move to) East Africa so should probably get this down! Also the official language of pan-Africanism, which I study.

Kwaherini!

Habari gani?

i’m goin to kenya in august of 2010 and i need to not look like a dumbass american (which i am so…)

Is there a swahili study group in maryland?