Product Review
A 800+ page textbook for anyone new to Swahili or wants to improve or brush up. Step by step explanation with examples and exercises, plus indexes, a 3,500+ bidirectional vocabulary* with mini-thesaurus**, and appendices. [*, ** - see examples below.] If you are going to East Africa, this is the text book you need to enhance your experience there, for being able to communicate with locals in their language is always most satisfying.
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*An example of a vocabulary entry:
lingana   v     match e.g. kusoma kwa mtoto kunalingana umri wake, the child’s reading matches her age
where "v" indicates verb. Note: All Swahili text in the book is italicized as seen above, to visually distinguish it from all the other English text.
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**The built-in mini-thesaurus takes two forms:
(1) Related Words e.g. the entry for "abadan" has Related Words, as follows: ["F" = foreign-origin; "adv" = adverb]
abadan   F   adv    always e.g. yeye abadan haridhi, he is never contented
Related Words:
baadaye, later/then
daima, always
halafu, then
huenda, sometimes
kabla ya, before
kamwe, never
kila mara, always
kisha, afterwards
milele, forever
punde, shortly
sasa, now
zamani, earlier
(2) Words grouped under the following categories: body, building structure, fauna, food, person, produce, terrain, tool, utensil, vegetation (including flora) and for adjectives, colours e.g. some of the entries under body are, in alphabetical order in English: [entries in brackets such as "(m,mi)" = (singular, plural prefixes); "n" = noun; "V", "xFF", "xFV", "U", "T" are noun groups as explained in Chapter 3: Nouns]
mkono(m,mi)   n body: arm              V
kwapa(-,ma)   n body: armpit           xFF
mgongo(m,mi)  n body: back             V
ndevu(-)      n body: beard            xFV
mshipa(m,mi)  n body: blood vessel     V
mfupa(m,mi)   n body: bone             V
ubongo(u,m)   n body: brain            U
...
tumbo(-,ma)   n body: stomach          xFF
mkia(m,mi) Â Â Â n body: tail (animal) Â Â Â V
paja(-,ma)    n body: thigh            xFF
koo(-,ma)     n body: throat           xFF
ulimi(ul,nd)  n body: tongue           U
mkonga(m,mi) Â n body: trunk (elephant) V
kiuno(ki,vi)  n body: waist            T
(A total of over 70 entries under body)
