 Welcome to our first Swahili Taster Session in our Language for Lockdown series. I'm Tom, I'm a student of Swahili and Linguistics at SOAS and I've sent a few questions to Moalimu Ida who is a lecturer in Swahili at SOAS. I've asked her a bit about how Swahili sounds and for some basic greetings and introductions so let's see what she has to say. Hello Tom, I'm Moalimu Ida. So you've just asked me how Swahili sounds like and I'll tell you what. We have five consonants and we also have sounds that are made from a combination of consonants. We also have sounds that are a combination of vowels but let me just tell you about this then. So the five vowels are A, E, I, O, U. I think in English you say A, E, I, O, U and how I would use this in a in a word would be to say for instance for R it's Baba to say dad Baba and A maybe to say a mango then I'd say embe embe and to say E for instance chair that I'm sitting on I'd say kitty kitty and to say O it say for instance a good example is fire motto motto and U our most favorite food to eat cuckoo cuckoo which is chicken so you see how Swahili sounds like sometimes we have vowels together for those A, E, O, U can be together so for instance when somebody calls you for somebody says Moalimu Ida they're calling me I would say naam naam that's two A's there ah naam and if I see a man that I respect then I could call him mze you've got two A's there mze yeah um yeah so those are okay two examples I can give you now greetings are really important among the Swahili you actually give yourself time along the way where you're going to meet people and greet them and sort of like see how they're doing and they'll see how you're doing so when you meet somebody they'll probably say Habari Habari that means news Habari Gani what are the news how are you what's happening and your response would be Nzuri Nzuri you could also say Njema Njema or Salama that means so Nzuri is good Habari Gani Nzuri they might want to ask you about school shule Habari is a shule you would say Nzuri they might ask you how's your dad Habari is a baba you'd say Nzuri have you noticed how the response is always Nzuri good because literally when somebody greets you and says hello you just say everything's good and then later you might say well actually Habari seems Nzuri maybe your father is not well that comes later but respectfully among the Swahili the first thing is Nzuri and then whatever else happened comes after so Habari Gani Nzuri Habari is a shule Nzuri the other one is Huyambo Huyambo Huyambo is how are you and the response is Sidi Ambo Sidi Ambo when tourists come to South Africa they go Jambo Jambo we know they are tourists because every Swahili would say Huyambo and the response is Sidi Ambo another greeting this is among the young people they say Mambo Mambo which is things and the response is Safi Safi or Poa which is cool oh yeah so Mambo Poa and when you meet an older person you'd say Shikamo Shikamo and the response is Marahaba Marahaba there's also a universal greeting along the coast especially which is Asalaam Alaikum and the response is Alaikum Salam when you greet someone titles are quite important so when you meet an older person you would say Shikamo Mze Mze older person when you want to say Huyambo you could say Huyambo Mze Huyambo Baba that's like quite that's like more respectful as well yeah and that's it so practice some greetings let me hear you Huyambo Tom Habariza Nyumbani Habariza Baba Habariza Mama Habariza Shule and Zuri Vizuri very good so today I want to tell you how how you would say your name how you would introduce yourself and one of the easiest way of doing it is to use the ni so for example if you remember when you met last week I told you Mimi Ni Mualimu Ida you remember that that's it then Mimi I Ni is Mualimu Ida teacher Ida Mimi Ni Mualimu Ida so Mimi is I where where is you where where yeah yeah is he or she so he is a neutral language no gender CC all of us Ni Ni you all while they them so Mimi Ni Mualimu Ida where where Ni Tom that's it another way is to say so Gina Langu Ni Ida Gina Lako Ni Tom Langu that's a possessive mine my name Gina name Gina Langu Ni Ida Gina Lako Ni Tom and to ask you would say Gina Lako Nani Nani is who so we ask who are you called we don't say what are you called or what is your name it's it's it's it's who you know it's more this is like a more humane language so here it is so you'd say Gina Lako Nani who are you called and you'd say Gina Langu Ni Mualimu Ida okay so go on Gina Lako Ni Nani Asante okay now I told you about the Ni you know Ni is like we said Mimi Ni Mualimu Ida Ni is one of the best verbs which is like an action word that you can you can know so you could you could use it to say so much you could say Mimi Ni Mualimu I am a teacher Mimi Ni Mama I am a mother Mimi Ni Wanamke I am a woman Mimi Ni Wanamme I am a man Mimi Ni Mtoto I am a child Mimi Ni Mkuba I'm big Mimi Ni Mzuri I am lovely and all that so try and practice now saying Mimi Ni and also Gina Langu Ni okay all right before we go you'll notice today I'm wearing something quite colorful this is called a kanga a kanga is the Swahili cloth it has a multitude of uses we use it to carry children we use it after delivery we use it for weddings we use it for almost everything when you're cooking in the kitchen it's pyjama when you go to bed and this is the Swahili cloth that speaks so you buy kanga because of the words that it has so for example the one I have here hanging says penenia hapako sinjia which is where there's a wheel there's always a way so if you want to learn Swahili there's always a way