Now live on Google Play
Real Swahili for real life
Reconnecting with family roots, moving to Nairobi, or planning a trip to Zanzibar. This is adult grade, dialect aware Swahili, with a tutor who understands the culture as well as the grammar.
Coastal Swahili. Two lessons to hit today’s goal.
Culture note of the day
Shikamoo lowers you on purpose. The reply, marahaba, accepts the respect rather than returning it.
Who it is for
All three want the same thing in the end: to be understood by people who matter to them, without sounding like a phrasebook.
Reconnect with heritage Swahili. The kind your family speaks at gatherings, not textbook phrases nobody uses.
Heading to Kenya, Tanzania or Zanzibar? Go past jambo and actually connect with people on the ground.
Exploring Swahili from anywhere? Learn the language, the culture, and the respect codes that come with it.
Five dialects
Pick one at sign up and every lesson, audio clip and correction adapts. Heritage learners can match the way their family talks rather than a textbook.
Hear the difference
A dialect is not an accent laid over the same sentence. It changes the words and who you are allowed to say them to. Play these top to bottom: same intention, three different lines, and they do not swap. Every clip is the real voice from the app.
Greeting someone
Saying goodbye
The app carries 340 phrases this way, across five dialects, each with the culture note that tells you when not to use them.
What is inside
Everything you need to actually learn Swahili. Nothing you do not.
Greetings hierarchy, noun classes, tense markers. Each lesson carries vocabulary, a culture note, and a quiz that explains its answers.
Audio that sounds like a person, not a synthesiser reading syllables. Pronunciation follows the dialect you chose.
Ask anything in English. Get Swahili back with a clear explanation, and corrections that are never condescending.
Niaje. Manze. Poa. The language your cousins use on WhatsApp, plus a straight answer on when not to use it.
Learn vocabulary through Diamond Platnumz, Sauti Sol and Gengetone. Songs you already play, now you understand them.
Family, food, greetings, travel. Categorised phrases with dialect notes and a respect tag on every entry.
Saying poa to your grandmother is genuinely rude. It sits about where yo sits with a judge.
Swahili encodes hierarchy. Every phrase in the app carries a note telling you who you can say it to, because a learner who gets this wrong pays a real social cost, and no amount of vocabulary makes up for it.
From the Sheng and Slang lesson, on the respect ladder
Your tutor
Culturally fluent, dialect aware, and patient with mistakes. Ask in English, get back Swahili with the rule that makes it work. Heritage learner or first timer, it meets you where you are.
I miss my family.
ni + na + wa + misi
I, present tense, them as people, miss. The -misi is borrowed from English and very common on the coast.
Your turn: say I miss my friends in Mombasa.
Pricing
The free tier is a real product, not a trial. Premium adds the tutor and the natural voice.
Start learning today.
Get startedOr $79 a year, which is $6.58 a month.
Start PremiumLifetime access. Support the mission.
Become a founderAnza sasa
No tourist Swahili. Just the language people actually speak, in the dialect that belongs to you.
Available on Android today. The iPhone version is coming soon.