Language

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I currently have three major problems with learning Kiswahili. The first is that there are approximately ten phrases for each thing you want to say, all meaning more or less the same thing. Greetings and commonplaces are especially guilty of this - I have lost count, for example, of how many different ways of saying ‘No problem’ (how ironic), I have come across so far. The most famous of these is, of course, ‘hakuna matata’. The second problem is that many words and phrases have very similar phonetic structures, or in other words, everything sounds the same to my untrained ears. Take, for example, the phrase ‘I ate food’. Simple enough, right? This translates to ‘Nilikula chakula’. How about ‘I am eating chicken’? ‘Ninakula kuku’. ‘I was sleeping’? ‘Nilikulala’. ‘I ate chicken and then I slept’ would be ‘Nilikula kuku na kisha nilikulala’. Try saying that at normal speaking speed and you will understand my dilemma in not only forming a sentence, but even worse, trying to understand native Kiswahili speakers. Kiswahili is not a complicated language, but these two problems alone are slowing me down insofar as having a conversation can be baffling even if I theoretically understand all of the individual words. My third problem is that my teachers are not teachers by profession, but boat captains, security guards, and kitchen workers. As Tanzanians, they obviously speak fluent Swahili, but being able to translate accurately into English or explain anything through context is somewhat hit and miss. As an English teacher myself, I fully comprehend the complexities involved in language teaching, so there is no way I expect my colleagues to be able to give me a structured language lesson, even if they had time. Therefore my first few weeks of re-learning Swahili consisted of slightly random vocabulary and phrases such as ‘ice’, ‘umbrella’, and ‘Where is your husband’ being thrown in my direction as I walked through the kitchen, or came up from a dive, or handed over some paperwork. The next stage catapulted me from being supposed ignorant of the language even existing, to people assuming that because I could hold a one-minute conversation (mostly consisting of the twenty or so ways of saying ‘Hello, how are you?) that I was suddenly and miraculously fluent. Unfortunately this was not the case, and my boyfriend and I still often find ourselves hailed with a friendly barrage of Kiswahili, trying to look as confused and non-comprehending as possible whilst still apparently listening politely. The most recent phrase I have mastered is ‘I don’t understand’, which is coming in very handy.

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