Kiswahili Lesson Update

Ng’ - This is the sound that is so hard for me to say these days. As I continue with my Kiswahili lessons, we are still in the basics of combining letters and sounds. Ng’ has been the hardest. Ng is one sound which I can do, but add the apostrophe and it changes and becomes my enemy! Their vowels are the same as ours (but sound different) so I add them to consonants and practice the sound and combinations over and over.

Ng’a Ng’e Ng’i Ng’o Ng’u

Check out this word: Ng’ang’aini. I cannot say it for the life of me! Ng’ is a sound we don’t have. I would describe it as lightly pressing the back of my tongue to the hanging ball doodad in the back of my throat and uttering a soft “n,” “g” and whatever vowel comes after. It’s tough but I will press on.

My teacher has been bombarding me with vocabulary words. Around 70 per lesson. With two lessons per week, I am expected to learn 150 words a week. And they are random. It’s not like we are learning animals or colors. It may be a list that includes the following: cockroach, sky scraper, gold, farmer, storehouse, those, father, nose, etc. As we learn letters, we learn words that start with each letter. It’s hard because if you change one letter in a word, it can mean something very different, and as I learned, something bad. I have been putting the words on flash cards and have been trying to keep up with the pace. However, I am a bit behind, but I am going to blame it on my pregnancy brain that never went away. Now it’s just the new mom/exhausted brain that limits my retention capabilities! Again… I shall not be discouraged and shall press on!

It has been fun though to surprise George when I know what something means. And I can count to twenty now! It’s challenging, but in a good way.

Badai! (Later!)