Today, I’m going to focus on learning some basic animals and insects in Somali. I don’t usually bring up animals in conversations, but when you’re learning a language in a rural area, people often like to point to animals and quiz you on them. It’s already happened to me twice, so I figure it’s time I knuckle down and learn these.
- faras = horse
- ri = goat
- dameer = donkey
- libaax = lion
- ido = sheep
- ey = dog
- yey = wild dog
- jiir = mouse
- geel = camel
- qorrato = lizard
- shimbir = bird
- bisad = cat
- qudhaanjo = ant
- shinni = bee
- kalluun = fish
- mas = snake
- kaneeco = mosquito
- caaro = spider
- maroodi = elephant
- balanbaalis = butterfly
- baranbaro = cockroach
- aboor = termite
Once I went through all these words with a Somali speaker (what a gift!), I drew little pictures for each one to review. My artistic standards have fallen since Day 1, where I was creating these colorful home decor items, but these sketches worked just fine for today’s purposes (and I’m not planning on hanging them on the walls). In any case, sketches are still a great way to stop translating, and start associating a word with what it means directly.
Whelp, that’s Day 10 in the books, bringing my official grand total for this challenge to 220 words — wild! Plus, now that I’m here, there are so many words just thrown at me that haven’t made it into these pages yet… plenty of review to do!
