Swahili Pronunciation Guide

Swahili is the national language of Kenya. In light of this, here at World of Difference we think it would be great to have a mini-Swahili language lesson every week. The first step to learning any language is discovering how their pronunciation compares to ours. Below we have provided a guide for some key Swahili sounds!

First lets look at vowels. There are five distinct vowel sounds in Swahili represented by A, E, I, O, and U. These approximately have Spanish or Italian values. Each vowel should be given its full value whether accented or not.

Now that we have mastered those vowels, lets see how consonants compare. Swahili consonants generally have English values, with the following exceptions:

Stay tuned for next week when we will check out some Swahili greetings!