Monday, June 30, 2014

How Can We Make It Easier For You To Learn Shona?

LearnShona.com has changed somewhat, but the work is still very much underway. We are looking to deliver a completely new way of learning Shona to you, and we'd like to make it more relevant to you. If you have any ideas/suggestions/comments then please let us know what would make it easier for you to learn Shona this year.

Best Regards,
The LearnShona Team 

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Shona Lesson 1 (Updated Version)


Shona Language Lessons - Week 1

These lessons are focused on simple conversations. The basic language skills are often enough to break down conversational barriers and to identify with others.

Shona is a relatively easy language to pronounce because vowel sounds do not alter from word to word. All words end in a vowel. Shona is a phonetic language - spelling easily indicates how the word sounds.


Shona Vowel Pronunciation

VOWEL

SHONA PRONUNCIATION

SHONA AUDIO

a
a as in army


e
e as in egg
i
i as in big
o
o as in hot
u
u as in who


All vowels are pronounced e.g. roora (marry) pronounced as ro-o-ra, and kuuya ( to come)
pronounced as ku-u-ya. Note that Shona has no l,q,x,c except the combination of ch-.


Shona Pronouns


In Shona, as in many other languages, there are different forms of addressing people depending on the familiarity of the relationship and the relative ages. Peers can be addressed casually, whilst elders, regardless of how old you are, are addressed with respect, or in the more formal way.  As such, the pronouns for ‘you’, and ‘he’ or ‘she’ change depending on how ‘senior’ the person is.

ENGLISH

SHONA

SHONA AUDIO

I
 Ini


You – informal, singular
iwe
You – polite, singular
Imi
She/He
Iye
It  
Icho
We
ti
Us 
isu
They
ivo
You – polite, singular
mu
She
Iye
It
Icho
Their
avo

Tips for memorising Shona words

 

Here’s a useful tip for memorising words. The brain is capable of recalling pictures much faster than text, so a way to make use of this more efficient type of memory is to create a picture in your mind that associates with the word. It doesn’t matter how unique the picture is. In fact, if you aren’t remembering a word with this technique, you just need to replace the mental picture with one that is more unique and interesting to you.
For example, with the word mu which meansyou’ in plural, you can picture yourself pointing at three people standing next to a mooing cow. How bizarre is that? But it might just work for you. Try visualising this for a few seconds.

If it doesn’t work, simply replace the mental image with something else that associates the plural ‘you’ with mu.

We’ll use these expressions in the next lesson, but for now just familiarise yourself with the variations.
Next week’s topics include possessives, greetings and the verb ‘to know’. We’ll also have a set of common phrases that follow on from the concepts in this lesson.   

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Learn Shona In Time For Christmas

Shona is quite tricky to learn without constant practice and good resources.

Fortunately, at Learn Shona.com we offer you a way to practise Shona by listening to, and repeating phrases and words spoken by native Shona speakers.

Now we also provide a 10 Week Shona for Beginners Course in this innovative EBook.

With good practice and Learn Shona resources, you could be speaking Shona in time for Christmas. Download your Learn Shona course today and connect with Zimbabwean friends and family.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

First Science Fiction Shona Book

UK based Zimbabwean author, Masimba Musodza, has ushered in a new era in Zimbabwean literature by publishing the definitive first science-fiction/horror novel in ChiShona and the first in that language to be available on amazon Kindle.
MunaHacha Maive Nei weaves issues of greed & corruption, sustainable developement, international corporate intrigue and concerns around bio-technology. Chemicals from a research station conducting illegal experiments begin to seep in to the local ecosystem, causing mutations in the flora and fauna. When a child is attacked by a giant fish, the villagers think it is an afronted mermaid-traditional custodian of the ecology- and seek to appease it according to the prescription of folk-lore. However, the reality of what is happening soon becomes evident, a reality more terrifying than any legend or belief.

MunaHacha Maive Nei was written for the next generation of ChiShona readers, taking a language that has long contended with encroaching westernisation in to the modern world of information technology and new media. It was written in the United Kingdom, a country that considers ChiShona a language widely spoken enough to have official documents and information printed in. Musodza demonstrates a remarkable flair for ChiShona and overturns the notion that it is not possible to write "complicated stuff" in a language that is often shunned by the educated back home. Influenced by Professor Ngugi wa Thiongo's Decolonising the Mind, Musodza has been an advocate for the sustained use of African languages. ( see this article here) It is his hope that MunaHacha Maive Nei will generate more than academic interest. The print edition will be published in the next few weeks by Coventry-based Lion Press Ltd.

Masimba Musodza was born in Zimbabwe in 1976, and came to England in 2002. A screenwriter by profession, he published his first book in 1997, The Man who turned into a Rastafarian. He is perhaps best known in literary circles for his Dread Eye Detective Agency series. Musodza lives in the North-East England town of Middlesbrough.

Click here for the link to Musodza's page on amazon Kindle

Friday, May 6, 2011

Learn Shona Off Google

Learn Shona has been helping people in the Zimbabwean Diaspora and those around them to connect with the people they care about, through the Shona language. You can start learning Shona with a free 10 week beginners email course, and audio courses from beginner to advanced level.

To ensure that the people you know benefit from Learn Shona, pass this email on. Why? Google has had recent updates which have shaken up its results, and now, people may not find us. We've got the only fully comprehensive Shona audio and email courses online, from Beginner to Advanced level. But until Google fixes this - which could take a long time - or you pass this email on, your friends and family could miss out on the hilarious experience of pronouncing new Shona words with you!

And remember, for any queries you can call us, email or use Facebook.
Regards,
Nyasha
Learn Shona Customer Service
Telephone: +44 (0) 843 2890184,
Email: service [at] learnshona.com

Monday, May 2, 2011

A New Way For Young People To Learn Shona And Focus On Homework



The social networking site Twitter is popular with young people of Zimbabwean heritage, who discuss Shona as though it were an exotic language spoken by their parents and other 'grown ups'. Postings on social networks reveal a disconnect between the avid fascination with the Shona language, and the time and effort that young people are actually willing to invest in learning 'another' language.

For young people in the Zimbabwean Diaspora who have been brought up in countries such as the US, the UK and Australia, Shona sometimes belongs to the 'other language' category. It can be difficult to find the time to learn Shona, given the limitations of a crowded school curriculum that consists of more mainstream languages such as French or Spanish. But online distraction has an even more restricting effect on the ability to learn another language.

Research shows that young people are spending more time online, to the detriment of time spent on homework. Not only do students have less time to do homework, but they certainly don't have enough time left over to learn Shona after all the time spent on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

A typical teenager's day will consist of at least 3 hours spent online, according to research published by the University of Southern California in the US, and the Institute of Public Policy Research in the UK.

Whilst expressing an interest in the Shona language online, young people are spending time on Facebook and Twitter that could otherwise be invested learning the language.

Now a new application has been created by Exceltasks Ltd, the company behind LearnShona.com, to help young people learn Shona and manage their time whilst online.

Since homework as well as learning Shona is impacted by the amount of time spent online, the Homework Focus application enables a student to block distractions such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This improves concentration and allows the student to stay focused, whilst permitting access to any websites required for schoolwork.

“Homework Focus empowers the student to acquire online time management skills. With goal setting, reminders and the ability – as a last resort – to block your own list of distracting sites, means that students can study more, take responsibility for their time and improve their chances of academic success” said Nyasha Madavo, Exceltasks Ltd Founder.

The Homework Focus application can be downloaded for free at http://homeworkfocus.com, whilst Shona courses for young people are available at http://learnshona.com/shona-audio-courses.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Learn Shona Blog: From Haiti to the Ukraine, Learning Shona in the Zimbabwean Diaspora



Zimbabweans are making their mark in far-flung parts of the world; a recent survey by LearnShona.com has shown. It seems that people as far as Haiti, the Philippines, China, Iraq, Brazil, Serbia and the Ukraine are being inspired to learn Shona by meeting Zimbabweans near them.

Using data from downloads of Shona courses offered on the LearnShona.com website, the team was able to analyse the geographical footprint of Zimbabwean Diaspora. The reason most commonly cited for wanting to learn Shona was having a Zimbabwean partner, whilst many Zimbabweans abroad also wanted to reconnect with people from home by speaking the same language.

The greatest representations by far are in US, UK, and Southern Africa, with approximately 20% coming from the US, 15% from the UK, and 12% from Southern Africa. It seems that the Diaspora is much more dispersed than is widely known. South America, Far East Asia, South Asia, Russia, the Middle East, West Africa, Scandinavia, Southern Europe and all parts of Oceania have people wanting to learn Shona and communicate better with Zimbabweans around them.

Zimbabwe's economic partners in the Far East feature fairly prominently in the distribution, with people in countries such as China and Malaysia being inspired to learn Shona.

A recent surge of interest has also come from Zimbabweans - in Zimbabwe! For some, learning to speak the same language is seen as being a friendly neighbour, or even a prerequisite for participating fully in cultural discourse, at least in northern areas of Zimbabwe. Indeed, over 90% of interest in learning Shona online from Zimbabwe comes from people based in Harare.