Learn Swahili

Start at the alphabet

The Swahili on-ramp is written by hand, not generated, and it is 196 cards long. Every card is spoken in a recorded Swahili voice, and what you get right is scheduled for review rather than shown again at random. This is the shorter, starter size of on-ramp; most languages here have about 480 cards.

• 33letters
• 10digits
• 13pronunciation rules
• 100core words
• 20everyday phrases
• 20sentences

Three of the pronunciation cards, exactly as the on-ramp teaches them:

• a — always “ah” as in “father” — a vowel NEVER changes value from word to wordbaba — father
• e — always “eh” as in “bed” — never the English “ee”meza — table
• i — always “ee” as in “see” — never the English “eye”kiti — chair

Your first Swahili phrases

The first phrase and sentence cards of the on-ramp, each spoken in a recorded voice:

• Habari yako? ha-BA-ri YA-ko — how are you?
• Habari za asubuhi? ha-BA-ri za a-su-BU-hi — good morning (literally “news of the morning?”)
• Habari za jioni? ha-BA-ri za ji-O-ni — good evening
• Mimi ni mwanafunzi. MI-mi ni mwa-na-FU-nzi — I am a student.
• Jina langu ni Amina. JI-na LA-ngu ni a-MI-na — My name is Amina.

What Swahili actually costs a beginner

The vowels are the whole of the early work, and the work is unlearning English. a is always ah, e is always eh and never ee, i is always ee and never eye, and no vowel is ever reduced to an uh however unstressed it is. That last habit is the hard one to break, and it is what makes an English speaker's Swahili hard to follow. Beyond the sounds, Swahili's real subject is the noun-class system — every noun belongs to a class, and the class agrees across the whole sentence — which iLexiBox meets in sentences rather than as a table of prefixes.