Swahili Food and Market Vocabulary: 146 Flashcards to Order, Shop and Eat

Ordering a meal is the fastest way to start speaking Swahili in Tanzania or Kenya: the vocabulary is small, you use it three times a day, and market vendors will correct you on the spot. Flip It deck KC7946, Swahili Travel & Food Vocabulary, holds 146 cards — and despite the title, essentially all of them are about food, cooking and eating out. There is no card on buses, hotels or directions here, so treat it as a dedicated eating-and-market deck.

Ten cards from the deck

What the 146 cards cover

• Staples and proteins — maji, chakula, mkate, maziwa, nyama, samaki, kuku, mbuzi, nyama ya ng'ombe, nyama ya kondoo, yai, wali/mchele, mahindi, maharage, muhogo.
• Fruit and vegetables — ndizi, ndizi za kupika, embe, chungwa, limau/ndimu, nanasi, papai, tikiti maji, nazi, nyanya, kitunguu, kitunguu saumu, kiazi, kiazi kitamu, karoti, kabichi, mchicha, sukuma wiki, njegere.
• Spices and seasoning — chumvi, sukari, mafuta, siagi, pilipili, tangawizi, mdalasini, iliki, karafuu, bizari, jira, asali, njugu, korosho, ufuta.
• Named dishes — ugali, pilau, biryani, chapati, maandazi, sambusa, mishkaki, nyama choma, kachumbari, mchuzi, supu.
• Restaurant and market — mkahawa, menyu, bili, sahani, kikombe, glasi, kijiko, uma, kisu, chupa, meza, kiti, mtumishi, mpishi, soko, duka, vyakula vya barabarani.
• Meals, cooking verbs and drinks — kifungua kinywa, chakula cha mchana, chakula cha jioni, vitafunio; kula, kunywa, pika, nunua, uza; kaanga, choma, chemsha, oka, pika kwa mvuke; chai, kahawa, maji ya matunda, bia, divai, maji ya nazi.
• Describing what you are eating — moto, baridi, tamu, kali, bichi, bivu, mbichi, kitamu, ghali, rahisi, nzuri, mbaya, kubwa, ndogo, zaidi, kidogo, tosha, safi, chafu, tupu.

Two tips for this deck

1. Learn the adjective stems, not the dictionary form. Many backs give you two things separated by a slash — Nzuri / -zuri, Kubwa / -kubwa, Ndogo / -dogo, Moto / -a moto. The hyphenated form is the real one to store: Swahili adjectives take a prefix that agrees with the noun class, so "good" is mzuri for a person, kizuri for a chair (kiti), nzuri for a fruit. Same for tableware: kikombe, kiti, kisu, kiazi all belong to the ki-/vi- class and pluralise as vikombe, viti, visu, viazi. Drill the plural alongside the singular and you get two cards' worth from one.

2. Double-check the taste words before you order. The deck's flavour cluster is shaky: it gives chungu for "sour", but chungu means bitter — sour is -chachu. It also gives pilipili hoho for "chili pepper", when hoho is the mild bell pepper; hot chili is plain pilipili or pilipili kali. And maharage ya mchicha for green beans mixes in mchicha (spinach). If you want your food spicy, say "nataka pilipili" — the safest sentence you can build from this deck.

Where to find it

Log in at flip-it.app and look for code KC7946, Swahili Travel & Food Vocabulary, in the library. For the general core vocabulary that sits underneath this one, see Swahili Vocabulary Study Guide: Learn 500 Essential Words with Flashcards.