Learning Swahili with LingQ and Language Transfer

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1

For the last couple of weeks, I have been learning Swahili with the free Language Transfer Swahili course. I didn’t use any other resource for the first weeks and only in the last weeks I began to compare my knowledge through LT a bit with the vocabulary of the LingQ MiniStories.
In advance I want to state that LT alone won’t get you far in a language but especially for languages that are quite far away from languages you already know, the program is a great introduction.
My takeaways from the course are the following:

  • LT is a fun mental exercise for language lovers. I really enjoyed going through the bit sized lessons while walking to the gym or on the way to the supermarket.
  • The course won’t teach you a lot of words, but you get a good grasp on structures and some essential vocabs. having finished the course, I recognized already some 500 words from the Ministories. Potentially I learned some 600-700 words (according to LingQ) through LT.
  • For highly structured Languages like Swahili where you get a lot of information in one word, LT helps a lot to approach them and eventually understand them.

For the next weeks I will work with the Ministories and relisten to the course.
I hope I motivated some of you to try LT out and join me learning Swahili on LingQ!

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2

I’m glad you are enjoying your Swahili study!

I agree completely. LT is really useful for learning and revising structures. I know I found it quite difficult to find quality resources for Swahili and LT is definitely one I would recommend. After you get through the mini stories, if you are struggling to find resources, you should look at Deutsche Weile’s Learning by Ear series’ in their Swahili section. I picked them up from a guy on Youtube called KhaLingua who documented his Swahili learning journey. They are professionally produced and recorded by actors. Lingq’s autogenerated audio is pretty good but it doesn’t really compare to well produced content.

The episodes of the series’ are challenging but if you read and listen together, they become progressively easier until you can follow along no problem while driving your car.

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