Home Schooling Part 2

When I was a senior in high school I decided I wanted to learn to speak Swahili.  I'm not sure I had a good reason as to why.  I remember that someone had once told me it was a very beautiful language.  It's possible it was because I was also told that the short, large eyed alien with the tri-folded cheeks helping Lando Calrissian pilot the Millenium Falcon in Return of the Jedi was speaking Swahili.  Whatever the reason, I went out and bought a book called, Teach Yourself Swahili and proceeded to make flashcards, memorize vocabulary and try to wrap my mind around the Bantu grammar.  I remember being impressed with its simplicity- the 3 verb tenses, the unified spelling rules and its friendliness- everything agrees!  The first verb the book teaches is tosha, suffice so all of the first few exercises were about what had been, was or would be sufficient.  Hence my first Swahili sentence- Kisu kimoja kitatosha.  One knife will be sufficient.  I believe I made it through Lesson 9 before some other extracurricular interest took over (fencing maybe?)  

Now here I am again having pulled Teach Yourself Swahili back off the shelf, wondering if I still have the flashcards  in a box in the basement somewhere.  Now however, my reasons for studying Swahili are clear, present and unmistakable.  I am studying Swahili to avoid studying French.  French is a ridiculous language.  14 tenses and a mood?  Enough irregular verbs to fill a dictionary?  Extra letters thrown in whose only purpose is to avoid the horror of the glottal stop?  Honestly.  So I'm taking a little break from conjugating etre, avoir and faire to hang out for a while with the ki vi class.  I only hope is that juma moja litatosha.