Hapana Swahili

Despite two years in Tanzania, I have a shameful lack of vocabulary when it comes to the country’s national language, Swahili. This probably also points to a shameful lack of interaction with the Tanzanians but that’s a whole other story.
At the moment, I believe I am proudly on par with the Swahili spoken by a 12-month old Tanzanian baby. The only words I seem to know are:

Asante – Thank you
Karibu – Welcome
Hapana santi – no thank you
Umeme -electricity
Mchicha – spinach
Duka – shop
Badai – later
Sasa - now

I also know some ‘cheat’ words which have the same meaning and pronunciation as Bahasa Malaysia/Malay (Malaysia’s national language) such as 'dunia' which means world.

I’ve been quite lazy about learning Swahili because the majority of Tanzanians speak at least a little English and I have met a number who are impressively articulate.

So, I’m left with no real reason to learn Swahili because I get along fairly well in English. The only person whom I actually feel the need to speak in Swahili with is my housekeeper and even though her grasp of English is pretty bad, it’s still worlds better than my Swahili!

I realized just how bad my Swahili is when I thought of translating “I Don’t Speak Swahili” for the title of this entry and could only manage hapana Swahili which literally means “no Swahili”

This is akin to someone saying “No English!” when they don’t speak the language. To think that I used to believe people like that were pathetic – now I’m one of them!