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Swahili Readers | ||
Tags: Easy Reader | Swahili | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5073 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 9 19 September 2011 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi. I’ve JUST begun studying Swahili. I have Living Language Spoken World Swahili, Teach Yourself Swahili (and the TYS dictionary – it’s fantastic!), and I had FSI Swahili printed through Lulu. These courses will give me a solid foundation in Swahili conversation. But none has a vocabulary of more than about 1,500 words.
After I've gone through them, I'd like to have some annotated reading passages to bridge the gap between textbooks and real-world Swahili, and to give me a better idea of the literature, culture, etc. I’m wondering if there are any good graded or annotated readers of Swahili out there that you know of. For once, the FSI ones don't seem that good. The courses I have now will keep me busy for many months yet. But I do like to collect resources before I need them. Thanks. [P.S. I wasn't sure wether this came under 'learning materials' or specific language'. Moderator, feel free to move if I've posted in the wrong place. Thanks.] [Edited for spelling mistakes... aghh ;) ] Edited by pfn123 on 19 September 2011 at 9:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 9 19 September 2011 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't have graded readers for you, but since you are collecting resources before you need them Deutsche Welle has a series called DW Learning By Ear- Swahili where you can listen to and read the text of the radionovelas about various aspects of modern life as it relates to Africa. By clicking the English link you can download the English transcripts.
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| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5073 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 9 19 September 2011 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | ||
I just checked it out. FANSTASTIC! That's just what I was looking for. They're topical passages with English translations. And even better, I can download the MP3. Sound, text, and culture - bullseye. Outstanding!! Thank you, iguanamon! :D Edited by pfn123 on 19 September 2011 at 2:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 9 19 September 2011 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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You're quite welcome. I use the series for Portuguese. I recommend that you start with the African Fables series. The language is simple. I made my own bilingual texts by copying and pasting into a two column text document printed to pdf/paper for listening reading. I find it interesting to learn about Africa whilst learning Portuguese at the same time and will use the series to supplement my French when the time comes.
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| pfn123 Senior Member Australia Joined 5073 days ago 171 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 9 20 September 2011 at 9:45am | IP Logged | ||
I just downloaded them. It's good too, because even before I'm ready to use the Swahili versions, I can still use the English, and so learn about African culture, news -- in this case, traditional fables. I find also that cultural imput motivates me, because it make the language 'alive' and 'real', if that makes sense. I've said it before, but FANTASTIC post iguanmon! Well done! Thanks :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6460 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 6 of 9 20 September 2011 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Awesome!!!
Thank you so much for sharing this resource. It seems that there is so much out there, like an entire series of plays about urban exodus... Even though I'm itching to start, I will complete my Assimil experiment before starting on these. I intend to convert these to parallel texts. If you create any, please share them so that we don't have to re-do work that has already been done. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5718 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 7 of 9 20 September 2011 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm so glad I checked out this thread even though I don't learn Swahili. Great site! I'm going to use those podcasts for French and maybe Russian. I've already subscribed. They are great! Edited by pesahson on 20 September 2011 at 4:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 8 of 9 20 September 2011 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Glad you all are enjoying Deutsche Welle's Learning By Ear. It's funny, I've posted this link a bunch of times and it never got much interest before. In the case of the Portuguese transcripts, they sometimes omit a sentence or two in the audio and they seem to be more a somewhat truncated version of the English transcript. Still, I find it to be a valuable free resource for language learning. If anyone is interested in Amharic or Hausa, those languages are represented as well.
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