Lonely Planet Swahili Phrasebook

There are many things in life I don't understand.

This is one of them.

On page 11, it says:
"There are no diphthongs in Swahili (i.e. vowel sound combinations, like in English 'day'.)"

Then, in chart below (paraphrasing), book instructs:
"Symbol 'ay' will be pronounced like 'may,' so 'wewe' will be pronounced 'wayway.'"

BUT WAIT, you just said there were NO DIPHTHONGS as in "day."

Now you're going to have us pronounce EVERY "E" as an incorrect DIPHTHONG?

("Wewe" is pronounced like "e" in English "leg." It rhymes with "heh heh," not "hey-hey". Why? Because it's not a diphthong!)

This might not be a big deal, except every time I read, I now have to "auto-correct" myself for the book's mistake ("ay" is pronounced "e" as in "leg"), every time.

And readers who don't catch the book's error will be pronouncing with an unmistakable accent.

Seems like someone there just turned off their thinking cap for a moment, and steered the whole book in a decidedly less useful direction.

Easy to use and a perfect size for travel, this is a top-notch learning device. It is well arranged, concise, and covers any eventuality.




an excellent little dictionary!

Very helpful for basic communication in Eastern AFrica; however, I would recommend also a Swahili dictionary, as this phrase book seems insufficient if one is interested in spontaneous dialogue.

I brought this little book for a trip to Kenya. It was a great resource for finding commonly used phrases and words. Swahili is a simple sounding, yet complex language. Because it was easy to understand the pronunciation of words, it was easy to look them up to see what someone who didn't know English was telling me!

It was easy to use in hotels, at the parks, shops and more. Made the trip much more enjoyable by being able to zero in on what I wanted with the right word(s) rather than using a point and mime system. Yes, at times I did transpose the words in the wrong order which had many of the native Swahili speakers in stitches, but they appreciated the effort to learn their language and the effor to communicate.

Like most Lonely Planet products, this is a well-organized and handy guide to the language.