Swahili is a beautiful language, and you’re right in terms of the melody. It will help you with learning Arabic in the future if you like.
In university, my housemates were a Tanzanian, a Sierra Leonian and a Tamil, and we had the biggest television, so became a hangout for many of the international students. Swahili and English became the lingua franca of the house/international students crew for some reason (about a third of the international students were Kenyan and Ugandan, so I’m sure that was a key factor, lol). Years later my knowledge of Swahili helped me meet this beautiful Moroccan simply because I knew some Arabic as a result. Ended up marrying her - it didn’t work out in the end, but it was great while it did, and Swahili was the spark. So you never know where things will lead, lol!
I can certainly see how it can re-energise learning previous language learning. Helps you see connections or understand bits you may not have seen before, even with unrelated languages.
What a great story, even with a tinge of sadness. I’ve always said “Language is an adventure”. When a country or a culture touches your soul, you just have to learn to converse with it. My Italian is fairly conversational, getting better n better with Cloze, my Swahili is very basic, but just saying and writing the words is becoming familiar. My first ever sentence was *“Ninapenda parachichi” although it might be “Napenda parachichi”? Grammar is not my best!
My avocado tree only gave me 5 avocadoes this year. Very disappointing. In the spring it was full of blossoms so I thought I was in for a bounty. But just 5, despite no hurricanes hitting the island this year. Disappointing lol
My peach trees, figs and blackberries worked out pretty well though, so I guess that’s something!
I had finished the golden tree for Romanian on Duolingo and just started the reversed tree and was wondering what next steps I could take to build my vocab and did a google search, lol. This came up and I’ve enjoyed it since!
It’s going well. There are many Romanians on the island in the service industry so I am good at ordering food now, lol! The pandemic has delayed my plans of some immersion vacation, but hopefully 2022 will allow it. In the meantime the Romanians here lend me books to read lol
I do two languages daily on Clozemaster, and I think that’s enough for now. I also do other activities (mostly listening-reading at the moment) in those languages. I was planning to add another Clozemaster language when I’m good enough (whatever that means) in one or both of those languages. But… I recently ‘accidentally’ started the Swahili tree at Duolingo and fell in love with the language. Unfortunately Duolingo was not able to hold my interest this time either, so now I’m only learning Swahili vocabulary with Drops app. Now I’m convinced I need to learn Swahili, but it’s not on Clozemaster, which is by far the best resource I have found. Well, maybe it’s good so I won’t get too much carried away.
Hujambo @hooetvee - me too, I looked for Swahili here, perhaps in time it will happen (please!). So I pop back to Duo to learn as much as poss. I feel privileged to be enjoying two such beautiful languages.
Sorry, going a bit off-topic here with regards to the overall discussion, but Language Transfer does have Complete Swahili. Sadly only still “Introduction to Italian”, and I’m still focussed on that for the moment, so I haven’t gone back to check out any of their other (probably) amazing courses (especially “Complete” ones yet). I like their method, but I realise it might not be for all, but perhaps you’d like to check it out at least, since they’re completely free, so it’s easy to just check out to see what you think of it.
By the way, have you and @Floria7 seen the Lion King by any chance? When I was learning Swahili (mostly gone now), I noticed that a lot of the character names are Swahili words. Poor “Pumba” is a bit “simple”/“thick”. “Simba” just means lion, “Rafiki” friend, etc. and of course there’s the famous “Hakuna matata”.
Which also reminds me of the easy to learn Kenyan “welcome” song (here is an example of it with both Kiswahili and English lyrics, but you can find many versions of it). I’ll see if I can recall some of the many Kiswahili artists and songs for the music thread, but I’m just going to mention Zita Swoon’s L’Opaque Paradis here too, because that’s one of the songs where I also enjoyed just discovering some Kiswahili phrases (tulitoka, sita mbili, etc.).
(P.S. I love avocados too, but am not sure I knew the Kiswahili word for them, I don’t think I ate them there, mostly ugali & sukuma wiki (which basically means something like “stretch the week”, it’s a cheap vegetable you can still afford at the end of the week), irio, githeri, chapatis, matoke, chips mayai, and lots and lots of chai so thank you for that @Floria7!)
@sindaco. Mamma mia, this is amazing, thank you so much. What stories you could tell us. I saw many musicals in Joburg but would you believe, I’ve only seen excerpts of Lion King. I love the intro song which is sooo helpful, particularly as singing is a great way to learn. I just wish I had more time to devote to kiswahili alongside my Italian, but something is better than nothing eh! I will check out Language Transfer!
Parachichi and rafiki are two of my favourite words and Nina always resonates as I once had a sister called Nina. It makes me smile when I write ninahitaji chipsi!
Yes! I am familiar with Language Transfer, and I am planning to try the Swahili one as well at some point. I did find the Spanish and French ones okay, though I’m not a complete fan of that kind of programs. I feel like I’m wasting my time listening to that much English, but I know it’s for my own good. I’m going to try if it’s better than the Duolingo course. I have no idea how to do Duolingo courses. I find the level system illogical and annoying. Language transfer is more straightforward, as you just listen to the next lesson.
I think I’ve seen Lion King once as a child, and I was delighted to have recognised rafiki and simba. I didn’t know about pumba though, thank you for that.
Hi Romanophile - I’m from Bermuda. But I first learned some Russian and Romanian when I lived in Kharborovsk in the Russian Far East (my neighbour in the apartment building was a widow originally from Brasov; had married a Soviet officer in the 70s - her daughter was an incentive in picking up some Romanian, lol).
A lot of the waiters here are Ukrainian or Romanian so I get to practice ordering food, lol. They brought me back a collection of Chekov’s plays in Russian, and two books in Romanian - a collection of fairy tales and then a collection of Ion Creaga’s short stories.
So, I’m in Canada… but have visited Bermuda (direct flight from Toronto) a few times. Maybe five times, and turned my parents onto the idea so they went maybe for ten or more visits. My Romanian connection comes from my mother’s family, who immigrated from Transylvania about 100 years ago, and was pretty much completely assimilated into English Canada. But I found the Romanian connection pretty interesting, and I visited my cousins first in 1987 before the Wall fell… and am trying to learn the language… from absolutely no base at home.
With such a connection, go for it! Then you’ll find out if you can learn more than one. My heart is in Italian but I’m trying a few words of Swahili because Africa was good to me.
If the language calls to you, a good reason for trying to learn it.
Interesting to hear motivations! I’m Dutch and learning Norwegian (I have lived there), Spanish (my COVID challenge) and Romanian (my wife’s from there) in parallel. I’m taking my Spanish slow but as I’m rounding up the main parts of Romanian I’m mainly focusing on my shared collection now, that I’ll look to update with what I learn from my regular in person class.
To me mixing is enriching but yes - I do find myself mixing up languages at times while speaking. I also find myself guessing right a lot though!
Regarding my last post on this thread: For the last two months or so, I’ve been working on Hebrew in addition to the Russian that I was already learning. As I had suspected, switching languages adds cognitive overhead when trying to function in either language. And of course, working in two languages also cuts down the amount of time I can devote to either one. However, I am getting better at language-switching, and learning Russian is no longer entirely displacing my ability to study Hebrew. I’d say that doing both simultaneously has been worthwhile for me.
To all the people on this thread: thanks for your comments. All useful and intriguing. The Clozemaster community may not be the quickest to respond, but has valuable things to say. Good traits, in my view.
Hi Volkert! We keep chasing each other in Romanian, lol!
I’m curious how you’re finding doing both Romanian and Spanish at the same time, with them both being Romance languages? Trying to work out if they help or hinder learning each other.
For me it’s not too bad combining. I speak Romanian more regularly and I do find myself throwing an accidental spanish word in, but it doesn’t happen that often.
I do find Romanian a bit more complex in general - more complex verbs and more complex rules for feminine/masculine - so I actually think I make more mistakes speaking and having some associations with Spanish helps more than it hurts me.
I recall living in Norway a long time ago I would in general mix up the languages I knew least well, independent of how close they were. I was throwing Norwegian words into French at the time.
so thank you for that 
