Customer Reviews
Structured. - By: Vicki, 13 Jan 2008 
I found this book invaluble when I spent 3 months in Kenya. It is stuctured & progresses at a good pace with exercises to pratice what you have learnt. Used alongside flash cards & speaking Swahili as much as possible this book builds the language up thoroughly in stages.
This book requires regular diligent study, but it pays off - By: weeze, 23 Sep 2007 Jambo! I've been studying the Swahili langauge (Kiswahili) for about a year. I started off with Martin Benjamin's little book which is great to carry around for a quick reference. But Simplified Swahili by P.Wilson is definitely THE book to get if you want to start right at the beginning & graduallly build-up your understanding of Swahili. It is a reallly good methodical approach, well laid out & organised. A lot of effort has gone into this book.
Little by little you'll learn new words & grammatical rules. At the end of each chapter you are presented with a thorough test (which I found challlenging but not too challlenging) so you can make sure you know enough before proceeding to the next chapter. The book has been very well thought out & works well. But one thing that struck me was that you reallly have to put in serious effort & sometimes re-read a chapter to make sure it has sunk in (I read a little every morning for 30mins). I found it slow going, & have had to read the first chapters several times, but most of what I've read I can remember. So if you're serious about learning Swahili & want to put in the effort then this book is well worth spending the time on.
NOTE: You should also consider getting the book ring-bound so that it opens flat on a table while you are studying it. I've done this & it is now much easier to study the book when it can be open flat easily.
I'd also highly recommend the Rosetta Stone CD (for PC) which compliments this book well because you'll actuallly hear native speakers & see lots of picture/word associations.
Strongly recommended! - By: Bandekafsh, 30 Jul 2007 I wouldn't use this book to learn Swahili as a beginner, but as a work of reference it is superb: detailed, thorough, extremely clear, with plenty of examples, & with lots of useful exercises for practice. Very impressive. If you're starting from scratch, use Colloquial Swahili by McGrath & Marten (book & CDs), & keep Wilson's book at your elbow to get a more thorough appreciation of the structure of the language.
Too much grammar - By: K. Brown, 24 Jun 2006 
This book is not for someone who wants to get a basic understanding of swahili. It is lists of grammar not useful phrases & is not in sections of when you would use the language. I would recommend Joan Russell's teach yourself swahili - which is a more relevant text that is easier to learn quickly to get by.
A beginner's review - By: , 12 Feb 2005 I agree with previous reviewers - the structure is logical, which makes this the most user-friendly language book I've ever come across. The information is clear & concise, with attention to correct pronunciation. Throughout the text, Wilson makes a consistent effort to demonstrate the use of phrases within their appropriate context. I will be visiting friends in Kenya in June & received this book 2 days ago - simply by reading this on the train to work I can already conjugate common verbs & confident with the greetings. Wilson noted that Swahili is one of the easier languages to learn - he definitely proves his point in this book.
