Hello everyone! Are you learning Swahili? Check out SwahiliPod101 ( bit.ly/Swahilipod101 ). They have hundreds of audio and video lessons (with text transcripts) for learners of all levels. For 33 other languages, check out my review! langfocus.com/pod101/. (Note: if you upgrade to a paid plan, Langfocus gets a small referral fee that helps support this channel, at no extra cost to you. But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't recommend it!)

I am from Zanzibar, Tanzania and this is the most accurate video about Swahili language I have ever seen. Thanks a lot for doing this.

I’m a native portuguese speaker and the sounds of the combination of the words are very similar, I’m learning Swahili with a Kenyan friend and it’s been very funny and cool. Ninaipenda.

I am from Kenya and the accuracy of this is just astounding.

As a native German speaker, I find the pronunciation exceptionally easy (even easier than English - or Bavarian German 😂). The noun classes and the many prefixes in verbs are a challenge - by the time I’ve put a future verb together, I need to change the tense marker to past, because it takes me too long 😁 In my early stages of learning, though. Hope it will get better.

I am from Somalia I studied Kiswahili in Kenya Swahili the African language 👍👍👍

I'm Kenyan, and I have learnt Kiswahili up till I was 18 years old. I love this language because you get to appreciate the rich literal (literature) culture of the Swahili people. Beautiful poems and captivating stories cannot be appreciated succinctly in any other language. Although we share similar grammar and vocabulary library as Tanzanians, these two countries use the language in very different contexts. Tanzanians speak a more fluid and rich vocabulary and the emphasis is on polite conversation. Kenyan Kiswahili is a lot more direct and formal. This is a well down video, highly recommended! Great job.

I'm Hungarian and somehow this is the most logical language, that I've ever encountered besides Hungarian. I really like it!

Swahili is becoming the African language. More and more people are learning Swahili. I am a native Swahili speaker from Burundi, I also make videos in Swahili often.

I’m Kenyan norm but currently live in the USA. Since I grew up in Nairobi, we spoke both English and Kiswahili but mostly a mixture of the two, as teenagers we spoke a corrupt version of the two called ‘Sheng which was pretty cool. The older folks didn’t have a clue of what most of our conversations were about when they tried to be nosey. Ha! People in Nairobi always were jealous of the folks from Mombasa and even Tanzania for their fluent Swahili language. Haha! Shoutout from Atlanta! 😎

I'm a native Swahili speaker from Tanzania. The only problem when it comes to the subject of native speakers is that western sources tend to group "ethnicity" and "native speaker" as being one in the same. I'm not ethnically Swahili. Very few people in Tanzania are ethnically Swahili. However, tens of millions of Tanzanians (especially those born after 1960) would definitely consider themselves as native Swahili speakers only because in many parts of Tanzania your ethnic language is almost always secondary to Kiswahili. Also, in most cases (especially today), coming from a certain ethnic group does not necessarily mean you are able to communicate in that ethnic language. Kiswahili is such a widely spoken language that most people don't even put emphasis on their ethnic language. My father is of the Zanaki ethnic group but he doesn't know how to speak the language. His "native" language is Swahili by default. Most Tanzanians' native language is Swahili by default, even though we represent some 120+ different ethnic groups. So in reality (and as far as most Tanzanians are concerned), the actual number of native Swahili speakers should be higher while the number of second-language speakers should probably decrease a bit.

This is the most accurate Swahili analysis I have ever seen from a white man!!! Kudos from Kenya🇰🇪

Hakuna matata sounds like a mix of Zulu “akuna” and Sotho (mathata). Means no worries too

Siri means secret? Damn you apple!

it is now official in Rwanda

I'd like to learn Swahili as it is widely spoken in africa,love from Ethiopia.

Swahili is the National Language in Kenya, you learn it at school, English is the second Language also taught in school and the we have other language( Mother tongue) some taught in school but not all, Swahili makes it easy for everyone to communicate no matter which tribe you are from.

Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Sudan Kusini, Burundi na Uganda ! Umoja wetu ni nguzo yetu ! Kiswahili chetu ni umoja wetu !

Born in Nairobi I studied Swahili till I was ten.This video brought back sweet memories."Kitab" means book in Hindi too

Here in Poland we sometimes use the word Swahili as a synonym for a very complicated or weird text that is difficult to understand (something like "double Dutch" in English). What is funny, it turns out that actually Swahili is not that complicated and its phonology is very similar to Polish 😁 Well, I'm not saying that it's super easy but it's definitely much easier than I expected ;) (We also use "Chinese" to mean "double Dutch" =D )

I learned Kiswahili 1970 in preparation of a stay in Kenya. The best tool was the book "E. O. Ashtons Swahili Grammar". It contains training and a lot of good examples. Plus it teaches words needed for the excersizes. As far as I can see it is still available. Strongly recommended for anyone who want to get grips on Kiswahili and start using it. (Presently living in Kenya and using Kiswahili daily since 1979.)

This made me want to learn Swahili, I like the sound of it

I am from Tanzania and a native swahili speaker and this is the most accurate video about Swahili I have ever seen so far.

The best part about Swahili is that if you’re from Africa, every American will ask if you speak it because its the only African language we’ve heard of.

Swahili sounds like such a fun language.

I' m from Comoros and I'm so glad you have talked about us 😊😊. Our language is 30% arabic vocabulary, 60% swahili and 10 % French and other languages words 😂. But generally, we are considering that our language is In the same family as swahili. I was, once, shocked when I Heard Lupita Nyongo said in a interview an expression exactly the same way as us comorian say it 😳😨😂😂😂😂. Love y'all ❤️ # EastAfricaPower

I really found kiSwahili very very interesting. It's such a logical language, very intuitive

I’m from Tanzania spoke Swahili my whole life but when it comes to studying in class the Swahili subject is hard 😂🚮

I'm from Oman and I do speak both arabic and swahili

I think you and Geography now should collaborate! :)

Im from Nairobi but i realized i took kiswahili classes for granted. I have began relearning swahili sanifu by reading more swahili novels!! I no longer want to stutter while speaking😁

Young generation born out of Africa with parents from Swahili speaking language countries, needs to keep Swahili going.🇰🇪🇰🇪

Hi. Just for the record 'Nala' is a verb translated as 'i'm eating', or 'Nakula'. 'Gift' means 'zawadi'

I'm teaching myself swahili, it's a great language... Noun classes (ngeli) have been really challenging for me. Nobody speaks swahili over here (I'm Brazilian) and it makes things even more challenging. Great explanation, by the way.

I am a Greek of Cyprus and our language doesn't have any kind of connection or similarity with Swahili. What I liked while learning the language is that Swahili is a logical and not a hard language. I AM confusing the "to-" verbs all the time (like "kula" and "kulala" are completely different verbs) but again the language is pretty simple to say the least..

I just love the way you are elaborating this so clearly

i am from Tanzania.my first language is swahili. but i cant explain swahili this GOOD

I love how you dig into the actual structure of the language. Fascinating.

I’m Omani , I’ve spoken Swahili my entire life and I’ve never been to east Africa

Swahili is so Awesome!! Once you mastered the grammar and noun classes it's very exciting to speak.

I am a teacher of Kiswahili in high school here in Kenya and i just love it.I can teach you the basics if you need.I would like to correct that "Pumba" is not actualy stupid.The correct word for stupid is "Pumbavu"

Ninapenda kusoma lugha ya kiswahili!! Lakini nitamaliza somo moja hapa katika mji wa Nairobi na nitarudi nyumbani, Marekani. Samahani kusema kiswahili vibaya sana, mimi ni mzungu hahaha hope that made sense, I'm so bad at swahili but I'm trying!! Mimi ni mwanafunzi hodari!

I am a logophile and linguaphile even though I'm not multilingual in practice, I have so much love for the world's thousands of languages and your videos give respect and pay homage to Earth's many tongues! Your videos should be required in schools if they're not already! Thank you for all your efforts and presentations about the one gift that distinguishes us from all our fellow creatures: SPEECH AND LANGUAGE!

Strangely this language makes very sense to me I'm a native Persian speaker and with Arabic understanding I could understand a lot of it. besides the grammatical system is very easy to pick up on to me, I'm kinda getting obsessed with the language.

i love when people talking my language, i am Tanzanian TRANSLATION IN SWAHILI Napenda watu wanavyo ongea kuhusu lugha yangu, mi ni Mtannzania.🤗

My native language is Arabic, one day, I was watching foreign BBC news channel (Swahili BBC) and I noticed that some words were so familiar to my ears, I was really confused lol then started reading more about and decided I want to learn it, I like how it's gender neutral, the most challenging thing is that I can't find many sources and I can't practice with native speakers 😭 I really wanna have language exchange pen pals from any Swahili speaking country 😘

Thanks for this awesome video!!! I was born in Kenya but we moved when I was 11 and I never got a chance to learn kiswahili properly. Here I am 12 years later in Australia using Duolingo and other media to learn it. My dad helps a bit too -- he's Kenyan born and raised and speaks kiswahili, kikamba, kigiriama, and bits and pieces from other languages and dialects in East Africa. He learned it informally, working in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, but since I don't have the opportunity to practise with native speakers anymore, I'm trying to learn standardised Swahili. I've done a bit of Arabic as well, so it was funny when you said that speaking Arabic helps with Swahili, because in my case, Arabic words like 'baarid' and 'samak' were recognisable for me from Swahili. :D Swahili is such a cool and vibrant language with an awesome grammatical system!!

This is the best Explanation of Swahili I have ever encountered!! Kudos from a Kenyan proficient in Swahili.

I have a friend from the Congo. We speak French at work, but I was surprised to learn he speaks Swahili with his family. He's from the South. I think Swahili is more widely spoken in the Congo that the map would suggest.

I’m from DRC Congo . I do speak Swahili. Our Swahili sounds really really different from Tanzania and Kenya. Their Swahili sounds a little bit like Arabic

This was a very well thought out and easy to digest presentation. I want to learn every language possible to be able to communicate with everyone.

I don’t know how to thank you for your helpful content, I’m watching your videos respectively and I love them so much 😇😇

My Occupational Therapist Is From Kenya & She loves teaching me her language

I am a native swahili speaker from Kenya. Generally Kenyans can speak both English and Swahili fluently since these two subjects are taught in primary and secondary schools. People switch between the languages depending on who you are speaking to, so one can choose either English, Swahili or their mother tongue.

I believe that Swahili deserves a reboot language profile video, having in mind your excellent one on Turkish, which was much more detailed in grammatical and syntactical phenomena than the previous one as well as very appealing in its outcome. Love and admiration for your incredible content, as always, from Greece!❤

Wow, I didn't know Swahili was this simple! Great language, might learn!

After watching this I ordered a copy of "Teach Yourself Swahili" and a dictionary. I'm actually learning Arabic and it might be fun to dip into Swahili. Also I know a lot of East Africans.

I've always wanted a video that will explain how swahili started..I'm an Arab born and raised in Kenya...we speak kiswahili and Arabic at home..Amazing video i love it keep it up.

Wow this is amazing. I am Pedi from South Africa and I always thought that hakuna matata is my language Sepedi just pronounced and spelled incorrectly. The similarities between Swahili and my Sepedi always make my jaw drop, some words are exactly the same.

Am a Malawian, based in South Africa I can tell you my second mother language is swahili apart from Tonga swahili is so sweet more than any other African languages apparently it's African English my stay in Tanzania made me feel like am in England 🇲🇼🇹🇿🇿🇦❤️❤️

whenever I have any question about any language, I immediately come to this channel. THIS IS MY FAVORITE CHANNEL ON KZfaq.. thank you Paul for your great efforts. I enjoy every video you upload.

I forgot to say that you are really a great lecturer, good work

Amazing video. And to add to your kiswahili vocabulary. " Asante sana kwa ujumbe huu"

Congratuations. You are so good in talking Kiswahili. In 50 years to come Swahili will be spoken worldwide. You are a very good Teacher.

Swahili sounds beautiful

Although I have not studied Swahili, I have a friend from Tanzania who lived right next to my room. One day I just happened to know that he knew Swahili and I was always attracted to the language, so I methodically analyzed (what linguists do when they want to know something about a language) and as usual; the noun classes fascinated me! But the verb confused me and I ended up concluding the noun classes as different genders because the adjectives were behaving differently (this is what happens in Prakrit {Hindi}) and I was too lazy to actually look up and do the research. Each and every one of your video is a marvel, I can only imagine how laborious it would have been to combine Phonology, Syntax Analysis, Comparative Philology and History. Bravo! Swahili is a simple and beautiful language. In fact, because I know Urdu which is derived from Farsi and Arabic, most of the words are immediately recognizable. I know Spanish and due to its nearly 90% intelligibility with Portuguese, another major part of Swahili becomes recognizable. I can't tell how exciting that sensation is! Thank you for such fine work Paul, you are a true linguist to the bone!

I didn't realise Swahili is so hard to learn ☺️ Maximum respect kwa wote wanaojifunza lugha tukufu.

that was some deep research right there, i really appreciate. am a Kenyan raised in Nairobi and I have been toying with the idea of learning Arabic and with this video am now more motivated than ever.

Very happy to see a language from Africa.

I'm From Tanzania...Thanks a lot, this will light up Swahili more to the other people around the word... To be hosted Swahili is the best language and very simple to learn. Keep on doing this... Thanks again

Thank you Langfocis for that dose of Kiswahili language,although there is only one lady who can speak Kiswahili in my neighbourhood(Soweto West South Africa) I want to keep on learning it for trade sake ,I am aware that it has now become a lingua franca of Africa.Thank you once more.

I'm from Rwanda. Kiswahili is very closer and similar to other bantu languages like Kinyarwanda (spoken in Rwanda and Burundi ), luganda and lunyankole (spoken by in some parts of uganda. But intresting thing is how every bantu language speaker can try to understand each other. Guy let us know how similarity is among kiswahili,kinyarwanda and Kirundi.👍👍👍

"Following Kenya's independence in 1963, the first Prime Minister, and later first President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta adopted "Harambee" as a concept of pulling the country together to build a new nation. " ~~Wikipedia

This is a real _tour de force_ among the LangFocus videos and has packed a great amount of information in a short span of time. I always learn a lot for these. Keep making them!

Fantastic presentation. Very systematic. I'll probably refer back to this multiple times. Thanks for the video.

Wow! What a nice lesson! Umefundisha vizuri sana na kwa usahihi kabisa! Hongera sana!👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾@Langfocus

I loved this video! Very interesting and informative! I didn't realize how much of an influence Arabic has had on Swahili, but it makes sense. And knowing that words like "safari" is Swahili is so cool, and that it comes from Arabic too. And right now, learning 7 languages with Duolingo, seeing the grammar and phonology of this language makes more sense...because since different languages have different rules and setups, it makes them much more connected and intriguing. And of course, thank you for all the effort you always put into these incredible videos!

Great, great episode! Probably one of my favourite. This is probably the first episode when you separated the history, phonology, grammar etc, and it works great. I was often not really satisfied when, in some episodes, you talked in-depth about history or geopolitical context while somehow neglecting the features and characteristics of the language. In this episode you managed to fully cover almost everything necessary and to keep the length of the episode similar to the previous ones. I especially liked this 5-point grammar characteristics of how the language works. This is exactly how I think these language-profile episodes should look like. Keep up the great work!

swahili was my highest score subject in high school and I LOVE IT!!! 🇰🇪 🇰🇪 🇰🇪 🇰🇪 🇰🇪

Nimefurahi kuona video hii. So proud of the way you talk about my language. Wow

Omg! It sounds so gorgeous! Amazing video, thank you so much for the effort. Greetings from Mexico!

Your channel is the only one that makes me stop everything I do just to watch your videos! Keep it up!

After this very accurate analysis, I have subscribed to this Channel, Thank you.

Kazi nzuri. Asante na hongera sana. Umefanya utafiti mzuri na usahihi wa historia na sayansi ya lugha hii ni wa hali ya juu. Asante tena. Salamu toka Tanzania... 🇹🇿

I noticed that this video focused, more so than usually, on the linguistic structure and the special characteristics of the language. I found this incredibly useful and interesting! Why? Here are a couple of reasons: a) It creates within me a certain craving to go out and study this language. It's like a friendly push in the direction of curiosity and learning. It's a great feeling. b) This kind of introduction is really useful when one actually wants to start learning a new language. And maybe I haven't searched well enough, but when I have searched for similiar introductions on the linguistic characteristics of a language that I am interested in learning, then these kinds of introductions have been quite hard to find. Well, that is, other than the ones that you have already made. ;) c) Even if one does not start to learn the language after thinking about a foreign language's linguistic characteristics, then I find that it still enriches the way that one thinks about linguistics in general. Quite often people (monolinguals especially) don't think about the actual linguistic underpinnings of their spoken language in everyday usage. Thus, I commend you for taking the increased amount of time to create such a valuable video. I hope to see more videos with a focus on linguistic structure in the future!

Thank you for this truly beautiful introduction to Swahili and Swahili grammar. It is wonderfully concise, accurate and an enormous help. One could say more, of course--for instance, linkages between nouns which also vary according to the noun class--but many thanks. To answer your question, working with the noun classes is indeed the greatest challenge in Swahili. There are 18 (though many people simplify them), and learning to switch prefixes--especially for adjectives and links is a mental and physical challenge. However, if you know Turkish you get a boost, because it too is agglutinative (and it has lots of Arabic borrowings).

Habari rafiki yethu. I speak swahili already but still learning from your polished swahili, Asante sana

I'm an L2 speaker of Arabic, and I've studied a bit of Swahili... thanks to all of the Arabic loanwords, I can already understand a good deal of Swahili, and if I really studied, I feel like I could learn it in about a year.

All your videos are interesting but the Swahili one is especially so. When I lived in Oman quite a few years ago, a number of our local Arab staff (we also had many Indian staff) would speak Swahili amongst themselves, rather than Arabic, as they had either been born in various parts of East Africa (places like Tanzania or Rwanda or Burundi - some of those also spoke French) or had family connection there. Even before that, when I lived in Djibouti, we used to incorporate a few words of Swahili into our internal coding system. I understand a little Swahili, basically because I know Arabic pretty well, but don't speak it. However I do think it is a really attractive language to listen to, even sometimes being said are not so nice - it is euphoric in the way that Italian usually is in my view :)

I'm from Zanzibar -Tanzania thanks for good explanation and the history of my language Swahili ,(asante sana na hongera nimeipenda hii video)

Definitely going on my list of languages to study!

I'm starting Sawahili lessons next week in shaa Allah, I found your video really informative and encouraging.

Fantastic, well researched video; thank you! Swahili seems like such a fascinating language.

I'm Arab and I can speak Arabic,English and Persian I visited Tanzania and I really loved the language there.

Wow, I really appreciated this video. From your new subscriber. Thanks.

I am a native swahili speaker from Dar es salaam and I can't get enough of watching this video. I am not a language teacher yet I teach my friends swahili here in Canada in my spare time. I liked the sentence you used in your example "Tembo wanakula majani" if you pluralize that sentence "Tembo" will not change because it is among of those words remain the same in both singular and plural.

I am incredibly impressed by your videos, really interesting and well presented, thanks so much for making them

Hi. I am a native Kiswahili speaker from Kenya and its my L1. Just a bit of info to add: The noun classes you mentioned are called "Ngeli" Initially they were as you presented, but they were changed a few decades ago. M-Mi is now U-I M-Wa is now A-Wa N-N is now I-I Theres also Ki-Vi, Li-Ya, I-Zi Etc etc This was in a bid to make learning kiswahili easier by using the subject pronoun in both singular and plural to name the classes (ngeli) for example Mtoto analia - Watoto wanalia (The baby is crying - The babies are crying) Here we are using "a" from analia (singular form) and "wa" from wanalia (plural) to form A-Wa class. Same to M-Mi Eg. Mti ulikatwa - Miti ilikatwa (The tree was cut - The trees were cut) We take the "u" from ulikatwa and the "i" from ilikatwa to form Ngeli ya U-I Hope it makes sense. I am not great at teaching so I can't really explain well the reasons behind it. Also all nouns indicating living things were put into A-Wa class regardless of their form so that their conjugation can be the same all through. Eg you can't say ndege hii (when u are speaking of a bird since its a living thing you say ndege huyu, ndege hawa, hence A-Wa class) but the same word can also be used to refer to a plane in which case it will be ndege hii, ndege hizi (I-Zi class) Maybe just have a look at a few primary/secondary kiswahili textbooks such as Kiswahili Mufti or Kiswahili Sanifu. They explain better. Great video I loved the explanations!

I like the way you presented tour lecture. Even Swahili gurus will have something to learn. Thanks for the good presentation

wow. This is truly an incredible video! I just started Swahili a few weeks ago and this really helped alot! Im currently learning on Duolingo and they do not do a good job explaining the vowels, and consonants. This just made my life 10x easier lol i will keep coming back to this video! Thank you so much for this incredible knowledge