Lonely Planet Swahili Phrasebook (Lonely Planet Swahili Phrasebook)

Rating:
Summary: Essential for a trip to East Africa
Review: I have purchased a few different materials to try to learn the Swahili language. The was by far the best value. It is full of useful information, and unlike the others that I purchased, actually teaches you how to build sentences, and not just ask where the train station is. If you purchase this along with some tapes, you will learn the language much faster.

Rating:
Summary: The one book I always had in my bag
Review: There just aren't that many swahili dictionaries or phrasebooks out there, and this one turns out to be useful too. Its small size makes it easy to take everywhere and the sections give travelers a good feel for the language without being too overwhelmed by swahili's many noun classes. I would recommend it more as a reference than as a stand-alone teaching tool, but the english-swahili, swahili-english dictonary is comprehensive and useful for travelers with all degrees of Kiswahili fluency. My copy has turned somewhat brown from all the dust, but the book has held up well. I would hate to be stuck in East Africa without it.

Rating:
Summary: The one book I always had in my bag
Review: There just aren't that many swahili dictionaries or phrasebooks out there, and this one turns out to be useful too. Its small size makes it easy to take everywhere and the sections give travelers a good feel for the language without being too overwhelmed by swahili's many noun classes. I would recommend it more as a reference than as a stand-alone teaching tool, but the english-swahili, swahili-english dictonary is comprehensive and useful for travelers with all degrees of Kiswahili fluency. My copy has turned somewhat brown from all the dust, but the book has held up well. I would hate to be stuck in East Africa without it.

Rating:
Summary: Good for learning in a Rush
Review: This book teaches the Basics of Swahili grammer and gives a person tons of words and phrases. One could learn some basic Swahili phrases from this and even think in Swahili numbers, but besides that, it is mostly a tourist manual, and unless you plan on being in rural East Africa, and are very polite, do you need to really know tourist Swahili if a large majority of the people will already have the ability to understand you in English?

Rating:
Summary: Good for learning in a Rush
Review: This book teaches the Basics of Swahili grammer and gives a person tons of words and phrases. One could learn some basic Swahili phrases from this and even think in Swahili numbers, but besides that, it is mostly a tourist manual, and unless you plan on being in rural East Africa, and are very polite, do you need to really know tourist Swahili if a large majority of the people will already have the ability to understand you in English?

Rating:
Summary: Excellent! The best out there!
Review: Very good! I am fully confident that it will help me wonderfully when I go to Kenya this summer. I will be buying more of Lonely Planet's Phrasebooks when I go on missions trips to different countries in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent! The best out there!
Review: Very good! I am fully confident that it will help me wonderfully when I go to Kenya this summer. I will be buying more of Lonely Planet's Phrasebooks when I go on missions trips to different countries in the future.

Rating:
Summary: "Must Have" for East African Tourists
Review: What's not to like? The compact size makes it easy to pack and tote on your trip to East Africa. It works great as a pre-trip study resource for the language - and equally well if you never open it until you are in a market in Tanzania and want to know "bei gani?" ("how much?") The book is organized in a way that makes sense - you can go to the section on shopping and find, not just a list of vocabulary words, but lots and lots of phrases to cover all kinds of situations. (If you have ever had to look up what you want to say word by word in a language guide, you will appreciate the value of this feature.) Like all Lonely Planet publications, it is written with a sense of attitude and energy - not dry like many language guides. My (Ki)Swahili is pretty good at this point - but I still pack this book whenever I go to East Africa.