Free Swahili learning resources
17 free resources, checked and categorised.
No trials, no paywalls, no sign-up required.
Everything below is free to use — no trial periods and no paywalls. The list covers the main ways people study Swahili: structured courses to build a foundation, dictionaries to look things up, and listening and reading material to spend real time in the language. Start with one course and one dictionary, then add listening once you can follow simple sentences.
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A Swahili Textbook for American spies. A bit old, but very exhaustive.
Swahili language and culture.
Learning resources.
Learn it there, practise it here
Free resources are great for input — reading, listening, explanations. They are weaker at the two things that actually move you forward: speaking Swahili out loud, and remembering what you met once. That is what OwnSlides is for.
Say it out loud
Talk to an AI tutor that answers back, or join a live room with other learners and native speakers.
Practise what you read
Turn a grammar point or article into exercises, so it moves from recognised to usable.
Keep the words
Save new words to My Words and let spaced repetition bring them back before you forget them.
This directory began from a community-built list of free language resources — a year of collecting and checking by Joanna (u/chlebka) and dozens of contributors who suggested links, shared freely. See the original list. We have since expanded, re-checked and re-categorised it, and we keep the per-resource credits where the original list recorded them.