Maia

Learn Swahili.

Kiswahili

Learn Swahili with a course designed for its noun class system, agglutinative verbs, and the Bantu grammar that's complex but beautifully regular.

Start your Swahili course

Why Swahili

Swahili is spoken by over 100 million people across East Africa -- as a first language in coastal Tanzania and Kenya, and as a lingua franca from the Congo to Mozambique. It's the most widely taught African language globally.

Swahili uses the Latin alphabet and has relatively straightforward pronunciation. Its grammar is highly regular -- once you learn a pattern, it applies consistently. The challenge is the noun class system, which governs agreement across entire sentences.

What makes Swahili challenging — and how Maia helps

Noun classes

Swahili has 15+ noun classes, and the class of a noun determines the prefixes on adjectives, verbs, and pronouns in the same sentence. Maia introduces classes gradually, grouping them by semantic category.

Agglutinative verbs

A single Swahili verb can pack in subject, tense, object, and mood as prefixes and suffixes. "Nitakupenda" = ni-ta-ku-penda (I-will-you-love). Maia breaks down verb construction step by step.

Arabic and Bantu layers

Swahili vocabulary draws from both Bantu roots and Arabic loanwords, with different morphological rules for each. Maia helps you recognize which layer a word comes from and how it behaves.

What your course includes

  • •Conversational lessons covering grammar and vocabulary together
  • •AI podcast episodes mixing Swahili and English
  • •Noun class drills, verb construction, and vocabulary exercises
  • •Spaced repetition for vocabulary and grammar patterns
  • •Adaptive curriculum based on your progress

Sample lesson topics

  1. 1.Greetings and introductions: habari, karibu, and the greeting ritual
  2. 2.Noun classes: the key to understanding Swahili grammar
  3. 3.Basic verbs: building your first agglutinative forms
  4. 4.Numbers, time, and daily routines
  5. 5.Agreement: making adjectives and verbs match their nouns
  6. 6.At the market: food vocabulary and transactions
Start learning Swahili

Free to start. No credit card required.