Swahili in Six Minutes

From zero to a fifty-word story for the total beginner

The Safari Begins — Author with DALL-E

Can you read Swahili? Yes you can! At least one word already ‘safari’ (originally from Arabic سَفَر‎, safar). If you’re a percussionist, you may have played the marimba. And if you’re not a percussionist, you may have still played the game jenga, which means “to build”. You will have heard of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is Africa’s highest peak — where kilima comes from the Swahili word for hill.

If you’ve seen Disney’s The Lion King, hakuna matata is indeed a wonderful phrase meaning hakuna — there are no — matata troubles. And you can already guess that the word simba in Swahili means lion, but you will be surprised that a mamba is a crocodile rather than a snake.

And by the end of this story you’ll be able to read a fifty-word story in Swahili.

A brief introduction to Swahili

But before then, a little bit more about Swahili, which is a Bantu language that is widely spoken across Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and other parts of Southeast Africa. Estimates for the total number of speakers range from 60–150 million.