Say It in Swahili

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486136578
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Contains over 1,000 useful sentences and phrases for travel or everyday living abroad: food, shopping, medical aid, courtesy, hotels, travel, and other situations. Gives the English phrase, the foreign equivalent, and a transliteration that can be read right off. Also includes many supplementary lists, signs, and aids. All words are indexed.

INDEX

All the sentences, words and phrases in this book are numbered consecutively from 1 to 1744. The entries in this index refer to these numbers. In addition, each major section heading (capitalized) is indexed according to page number. Grammatical forms are indicated (where there might be confusion) by the following italic abbreviations: adj. for adjective, adv. for adverb, n. for noun, pl. for plural, sing. for singular, and v. for verb. Parentheses are used for explanations.

Because of the already large extent of the indexed material, cross-indexing has generally been avoided. Phrases or groups of two words or more will be found under only one of their components (e.g., “ballpoint pen” and “fountain pen” only under “ballpoint” and “fountain,” even though there is a separate entry for “pen” alone). If you do not find a phrase under one of its words, try another.

Every English word or phrase in the index is followed by its Swahili equivalent, which is usually given in its basic (or “dictionary”) form. Thus, in effect, the reader is here provided with a unique English-Swahili glossary of up-to-the-minute language. Naturally, a rudimentary acquaintance with Swahili grammar is essential for making the best use of this index, since the basic forms of many words are altered in sentence situations by a variety of prefixes and suffixes. To assist you in using the correct forms of words in sentences of your own making, the index lists not only the first numbered sentence in which each word occurs, but also all the sentences in which the basic form is significantly varied.

Thus, for example, under “want” (basic form: taka), sentences andare listed. These sentences (in numerical order) provide the forms nataka (I want), sitaki (I do not want), unanitaka (you [sing.] want me), unataka (you [sing.] want) and tunataka (we want)—in other words, all the forms of taka that happen to appear in the book. Invariable words are indexed only under their first appearance, and only one appearance of each variation is given, so that there are no unnecessary duplicate listings. The beginner would do well to look at all ...