Swahili

The lingua franca of East Africa — and an official language of the African Union.

11 themes · 2 age tiers · puzzle library keeps growing

Speakers

Over 80 million speakers (first and second language combined)

Where it's spoken

Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, Mozambique, Comoros, and a growing presence across Africa and the diaspora

Language family

Bantu (Niger–Congo family), Sabaki group

In the app

11 themes, 6 puzzle types, 2 age tiers

About Swahili

Swahili (Kiswahili) is the most widely spoken Bantu language in the world. It is the national language of Tanzania and Kenya, an official working language of the African Union, and is taught in schools across East and Central Africa. For travellers, traders and students, it is the single most useful African language to speak.

Unlike most tonal African languages, Swahili is non-tonal — which makes it one of the gentler entry points to the Bantu family. Pronunciation is almost perfectly phonetic (what you see is what you say), words always stress the second-to-last syllable, and the grammar is regular enough that children make fast, confident progress.

Swahili has absorbed vocabulary from Arabic, Portuguese, Persian, German and English over a thousand years of trade along the East African coast. That rich layered history lives on in everyday words like 'chai' (tea), 'safari' (journey) and 'habari' (news). Teaching a child Swahili is teaching them a cultural history book.

'Karibu' means welcome, but it is used far more broadly than its English counterpart — it is the answer when someone thanks you, the greeting at a doorstep, and the invitation to share a meal.

A handful of Swahili to take away

These appear across our puzzles — every word in the app is paired with a translation and a spoken voice.

Jambo

Hello (casual)

Habari

How are you? (lit. 'news?')

Asante

Thank you

Mtoto

Child

Baba

Father

Mama

Mother

Tips from our editors

•Start with greetings and pronouns — Swahili stacks them in a predictable way, so a handful of building blocks unlocks dozens of sentences.
•Notice the noun-class prefixes (m-, wa-, ki-, vi-): once they click, reading becomes much easier.
•Listen to Kenyan or Tanzanian children's music on a loop — rhythm carries half of the vocabulary for free.

Pick a theme to play

Each theme gathers 40–80 words, phrases and idioms. Every puzzle type teaches the same vocabulary in a different way — children absorb the words faster because they meet them again and again from new angles.