Say it in Swahili

Sema kwa ki Swahili

As temperatures tumble, Dennis Odalloh of Kenya wonders what winter will be like in a place where the weather is cold but the people are warm. This is Odalloh’s first time out of Africa.

The Fulbright Scholar is teaching Swahili language and conversation classes while taking two MU classes in journalism toward a degree in advanced linguistics.

The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures initiated the course in Swahili in fall 2005 when a Fulbright-sponsored program chose Mizzou as a host site to teach the language. A director of the Institute of International Education selected Mizzou after visiting the Romance Languages Web site. He was intrigued by MU’s Afro-Romance Institute.

Likewise, Odalloh’s students say they are intrigued by the melodic African language spoken by more than 50 million people

Senior Derek Coleman of Columbia enrolled in the Swahili classes to complete his foreign-language credits but now sees career potential in combining Swahili with an art history and archaeology major. He and other students of Odalloh are considering applying to the Peace Corps.

Swahili borrows much of its vocabulary from Arabic. It is spoken mostly in East Africa and is part of Bantu, the largest language family in Africa. Swahili shares the same alphabet as English and the same sentence construction with the order of subject, verb and direct object.

"It's a lovely language with a long poetic tradition," says Assistant Professor Vickie Carstens, a linguist of African languages. "People tend to pick it up pretty easily." Most people recognize at least a few Swahili words, such as safari and bwana, from adventure movies.

During class, Odalloh encourages the new speakers to use full sentences. After just three weeks of the lecture and conversation classes, his students were already writing compositions. Their progress pleases him.

"Tomorrow I’m giving a speaking exercise," he says, "tongue twisters." It will be a new experience for the students. Meanwhile, Odalloh himself is enjoying the new food, new friends and new experiences in Missouri.

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Link:

Department of Romance Languages

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