What is Swahili?

Swahili is a bantu language, lingua franca of East African countries (Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a national or an official language of the East Africa. It is the only language of African origin among the official languages of the African Union.  

Swahili is the first language to more than 2 million people and a second language to some 60 millions. Modern Swahili is usually written in the Latin alphabet, though the literature dates back to the early 18th century in Arabic script. Swahili has loanwords from many languages including Portuguese, English and a lot from Arabic.

List of some useful links to websites that can help you learn KiSwahili:

1. IPL KiSwahili
2. Corso introduttivo di Swahili
3. Swahili at FlashCard Exchange
4. Online KiSwahili (audio) lessons
5. Welcome to Kiswahili at Rutgers University
6. Verbix Conjugator Swahili verbs conjugator
7. Some common KiSwahili words and phrases
8. Karibu : Italiano - Esperanto - KiSwahili - English
9. Omniglot: Swahili alphabet, pronounciation and language
10. Welcome to the Swahili Activities Page (suitable for children)
11. MwanaSimba -  A new Swahili method for beginners
12. Swahili materials at Archive uploaded by various people
13. Swahili listening, speaking, reading, and writing resources, by the Faculty of Virginia.
14. Swahili language and culture Audio Swahili, Tanzania, kangas exhibition, by Hassan O. Ali.
15. KiSwahili home page Introductory Kiswahili Lessons, by AbdulGhany M. and Kassim A. A.
16. KIKO - Kiswahili Kwa Komputa Graded Swahili dialogues and texts, with notes and exercises, by the African Studies Institute, University of Georgia.

1. Numerous gap-fill translation exercises, and vocabulary exercises to test your Swahili, by the University of California.
2. Online Swahili exercises 
3. Archives of popular Swahili Letters to the editor from the section Habari za Kwetu in Mwana Shaba : samples of written Swahili from D.R. Congo, published in the 1950s.x
4. Kwangu.com Verb builder, verb parser, verb derivator, verb builder, by Jacob Knight.
5. Jarida la Wanafunzi wa KiSwahili A Newsletter written by students of Swahili in the USA, University of Pennsylvania.
6. KiSwahili materials Audio Swahili, dialogues, plays, pictures of Kenya, by Jane Irungu, Department of African & African-American Studies, University of Kansas.
7. KiSwahili web at Upenn Vocabulary, Crosswords, Conversations, Listening exercises, Reading comprehension at intermediate level, by Mw. Alwiya S. Omar, Mw. Ahmed Shariff, University of Pennsylvania (some parts under construction).
8. Noun classification in KiSwahili A paper on noun classification in Swahili, by Dr Ellen Contini-Morava, University of Virginia.
9. Swahili online courses Audio Swahili, dialogues, exercises, by the Department of Linguistics at UIUC.
10. Swahili exercises from the book Kiswahili: Msingi wa Kusema, Kusoma, na Kuandika (2nd edition) 1998. Thomas J. Hinnebusch & Sarah Mirza. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
11. Swahili online A general survey on the Swahili language and its origins.
12. Ki-Swahili Learning Swahili Vocabulary. Offers a large choice of foreign languages besides kiswahili.
13. Bantu Language Identifier Umqageli, a guesser for Bantu languages, by Jacky Maniacky.
14. List of other sites (some could be a repeat) provided by Stanford University department of International Languages - SwahiliLanguage

 Online Swahili Dictionaries

1.  The Kamusi Project Swahili discussion forum and online dictionary, Yale program in African languages.
2. KiSwahili IT glossary English - KiSwahili
3. Dizionario Italiano-Swahili
4. Swahili English and English - Swahili Provided by TshwanexLex.
5. Freedict online dictionary Swahili - English and English - Swahili, by Freedict.

Swahili, Khanga sayings, Poetry

1. Swahili sayings
2. Khanga sayings
3. "Umbuji wa Kiwandeo" poem and "The Building of Synonyms in the Language of KiSwahili" by a Kenyan poet, Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany.