Languagle #19: Swahili
Kila ndege huruka kwa bawa lake
"Every bird flies with its own wings."
What it means
Everyone has to make their own way in life, using their own abilities. Each bird flies with its own wings; nobody can lend you theirs. It is used to encourage self-reliance.
How to say it
KEE-la NDEH-geh hoo-ROO-ka kwa BA-wa LA-keh
Swahili stresses the second-to-last syllable of every word. Vowels are pure and clear, as in Spanish or Italian.
Word by word
- Kila KEE-la: every
- ndege NDEH-geh: bird (and, these days, aeroplane)
- huruka hoo-ROO-ka: flies (hu- marks something that always happens)
- kwa kwa: with
- bawa BA-wa: wing
- lake LA-keh: its own
Where it was found
Swahili calls a proverb a methali. This one is entry 423 in a University of Illinois archive of Swahili proverbs.
Similar sayings
- Kurdish (Kurmanji): Her giya li ser koka xwe hêşîn tê. Every plant grows green on its own root. (Languagle #7)
How to recognise Swahili
Swahili uses the plain Latin alphabet with no accents, and almost every word ends in a vowel. Short words like na, ya, wa, kwa and ni turn up constantly, along with noun prefixes like m-, wa-, ki- and vi-. The apostrophe in ng' (as in ng'ombe, cow) is a strong clue. Many other Bantu languages add special letters: Kikuyu has ĩ and ũ, and Zulu writes its clicks with c, q and x.
About the Swahili language
Swahili, or Kiswahili, is a Bantu language that grew up along the East African coast through centuries of trade across the Indian Ocean, and it has absorbed many Arabic words. Only a few million people speak it as a first language, but tens of millions use it as a second language, making it one of the most widely spoken languages in Africa. It is official in Tanzania and Kenya and is written in the Latin alphabet.
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