Habari gani? (What news?) Nilikuja Choma (I have come to Choma)

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One major disadvantage to this move down south is that it means I have to start learning another language. Not that I had become all that useful in Swahili, but I had made a good start. Because I’m not learning more Swahili, I felt like posting some of my thoughts about the language.

One of the things I found hardest was trying to get my ears to pick out the right part of the word so I could understand what it meant. In English we mostly change the ends of words, child/children, but in Swahili, it is mtoto/watoto. The root is typically the end of the word, and mostly what changes are the beginning and/or the last vowel. Because I’m not used to listening for that part of a word, I am slow at picking it out, and thus usually end up four or five words behind when I am listening to someone. Also, as you can see from the title of this entry, what would be a number of different words in English, is often many less in Swahili because things are done with prefixes and infixes. Ni ->I, li->past tense, kuja->come.

An interesting difference between Tanzania and Zambia is the national language. In Tanzania it is Swahili and English. Swahili is what is normally spoken socially, and is the language of instruction for grades 1 to 7. English is the language of instruction from Form 1 to 6, like grades 8 to 13, and in university. In Zambia the national language is English. This means that majority of people speak English in Zambia, while in Tanzania it’s hit and miss.

In terms of me doing work, this means that it is much easier for me to work in Zambia than Tanzania. I have been wondering if it is an advantage for Tanzania to have it’s own national language. Tanzania has nearly 200 tribal languages, and Zambia has 73, so picking a national language is certainly important for things like government, education, and creating a national identity. Having chosen Swahili as the national language seems to have given Tanzanian a stronger identity as a country. I never had anyone talk about what tribe they are from unless I knew them quite well, or I asked them. Also, on the surface anyway, politics seem to be less tied to tribe in Tanzania than in Zambia. On the other hand, it does make development work by foreigners a bit harder and it creates a class distinction between those who complete high school and those who don’t. You can quite quickly judge the level of someone’s education by their English ability.

On the plus side the language I am currently learning in Zambia, Tonga, is of Bantu origin, just like Swahili. So they have similar structures and some words are the same. It’s kind of like the difference between French and Spanish.

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Photos

The future of Tanzanian Hockey
This picture has nothing to do with the post, I just think it is funny.