Learn Chinyanja from Native Speakers
 |
|
Learn Chinyanja Basics
Language Experts agree, our courses are the most complete and thorough self-instructional language course available. Our competitors like Rosetta Stone would like you to believe learning a language is easy and fun. We think they are being dishonest. The truth about learning a language is it takes time. Repetition, vocabulary, sentence structure are the building blocks our course utilizes to teach a language. Lots of repetition drills. Dialog drills. Pronunciation drills. Vocabulary. Your investment in a language course is your time. The audio material is from native speakers and the corresponding textbook is your guide. There are no short cuts. Our Methodology, Guided Imitation, sets the student on a path to a certified level of fluency. Our courses are the most comprehensive self instructional language material available on the market.
The Chinyanja Basics contains Units 1-63 and comes with 15 CD's and a 376 page textbook or 1 DVD with audio in MP3 and textbook on a PDF file.
Chinyanja, the principal language of Malawi, is spoken not only in that country but by large numbers of Malawians in neighboring countries. This course is intended to give the student a start in the language, both by providing them with materials for study, and by guiding them in taking over more and more of the responsibilities connected with language learning. The goal is the ability to speak a little Chinyanja well, and ability to learn much more of it as is needed for individual work situations in Malawi.
Speakers of English who are studying Nyanja find the pronunciation less difficult than it is confusing. Nyanja has no "clicks", no ''whistling z's" and no "coarticulated stops", yet published descriptions of the consonant sounds of the language leave the would-be learner in doubt at some crucial points.
An example from English may help to make the problem clearer. Suppose that a speaker of some other language has learned to pronounce English top in two ways: in both pronunciations he closes his lips in order to form the 'p'. In one, he allows his lips to open immediately thereafter, and a small puff of air escapes: in the other he keeps his lips closed indefinitely. Each pronunciation is quite common in normal spoken English. His question is, 'how important is this physical difference? Are there some words in which only one of these is correct, and other words in which the other is required? Or may I just forget about the difference and use these two sounds intercnangeably?" The answer, of course, is that the two are interchangeable. For that reason, we need not and do not represent the difference when we write. But the same student of English may find the physical difference between tie and die just as subtle as the difference between the two pronunciations of top. Yet native speakers of English do not interchange the sounds that begin these two words. The foreign learner of English must keep them apart from one another: and the difference is reflected in our spelling by the fact that we have the two separate letters t and d.
Returning now to Nyanja, the student will hear sounds that resemble the dz in adze, and others that are similar to the z sound in as. He has no serious difficulty in making either one of them, but he still needs to know what status this physical difference has within Nyanja. Are there some words where he must use dz and not z, and others where z is right and dz wrong? Or may he forget about the physical difference and use the two sounds interchangeably? And what about a p-like sound with no aspiration (puff of air) after it, and a p-like sound that is followed by strong aspiration? How much attention should he pay to this difference?
You will learn these differences with this course
Unit 1 - What is your name?
Unit 2 - Where are you from?
Unit 3 - Where is your present home?
Unit 4 - When did you arrive
Unit 5 - When did you arrive
Unit 6 - When di you arrive
Unit 7 - By what mode of transportation did you arrive
Unit 8 - How old are you?
Unit 9 - When were you born?
Unit 10 - Where were you born?
Unit 11 - Where do your parents live
Unit 12 - Do you have any brothers and sisters
Unit 13 - Are you married?
Unit 14 - Do you have any children
Unit 15 - What kind of work do you plan to do?
Unit 16 - Do you like it here?
Unit 17 - How long are you going to stay here?
Unit 18 - Where are you living at present?
Unit 19 - Is this yours?
Unit 20 - Good morning, where are you going?
Unit 21 - Are you going to the market
Unit 22 - Do you have a wife
Unit 23 - Where do you live, Mwanza.
Unit 24 - Where do you live, Mwanza.
Unit 25 - A younger friend comes to visit an old man
Unit 26 - Are you going to Limbe today?
Unit 27 - I'm glad to see her
Unit 28 - Peter has just arrived at the home of a friend
Unit 29 - Hello, did you have trouble getting here?
Unit 30 - Being introduced to people
Unit 31 - Are you married
Unit 32 - I've come to see you
Unit 33 - Do you speak Nyanja?
Unit 34 - There are some young men teaching Nyanja
Unit 35 - I speak a little, no this is not my language
Unit 36 - A European asks about local languages in the vicinity of Malawi
Unit 37 - Where do you live, I live three villages from here
Unit 38 - I live in Mwanza
Unit 39 - Useful questions and answers
Unit 40 - Useful questions and answers
Unit 41 - A Peace corp volunteer is asked about his work
Unit 42 - A Peace corp asks an aquaintance about his work
Unit 43 - Two fellow workers look forward to quitting time
Unit 44 - Just arrived into town and looking for work
Unit 45 - Still looking for work
Unit 46 - How's the work going
Unit 47 - A conversation on the way home from work
Unit 48 - Prospect of a business trip out of town
Unit 49 - Plans for the evening
Unit 50 - Street and road directions
Unit 51 - Road directions
Unit 52 - Directions to a rural school
Unit 53 - Directions within a town
Unit 54 - An unsuccessful attempt to get directions
Unit 55 - October weather in Malawi
Unit 56 - December weather in Malawi
Unit 57 - Febuary weather in Malawi
Unit 58 - April weather in Malawi
Unit 59 - June weather in Malawi
Unit 60 - August weather in Malawi
Unit 61 - Buying maize
Unit 62 - Buying peas
Unit 63 - Buying tomatoes
