It is a...

Waa buug.                  It is a book
         koob                           cup
         sac                              cow
         libaax                           lion
         guri                              house
         suuq                            market
         shimbir                        bird


You use 'waa' to say 'It is'.

The tough letters

Somali shares most of its letters with Arabic; if you can pronounce Arabic characters, you should be able to pronounce Somali ones without difficulty.The tough letters to pronounce are 'c', 'q', 'x', 'kh', 'dh'.  'c' corresponds to the Arabic letter ع , 'q' toق'x' to  خ   to    'kh'   ح 

Use the video above to get a feel for the sounds of the letters. (Note: the sound 'kh' was not pronounced correctly)

Elongated and short vowels

Many words in Somali have elongated (long) vowels. English words have them also (e.g. the long 'a' sound in 'bath'), but in Somali elongated vowels are represented by an extra letter.  Hence,

'a' (short vowel) : 'aa'( elongated vowel)
'e' (short vowel) : 'ee'( elongated vowel; like the 'ee' sound in 'bear')
'i' (short vowel) : 'ii'( elongated vowel)
'o' (short vowel) : 'oo'( elongated vowel; like the 'o' sound in 'door' )
'u' (short vowel) : 'uu'( elongated vowel; like the 'u' sound in 'food')

Above is a good video that shows the difference between long and short vowels. Short vowels in Somali is 'Shaqal gaab', long vowels are 'Shaqal dheer'.

How to say hello

Ma nabad baa? - How are you? (lit. 'Is it peace?')

Waa nabad. -      I'm fine (lit.'It is peace.')

Maxaad sheegtay? - How are things? (lit.'What did you say?')

The Alphabet

Somalis use the Latin alphabet to read and write. This is basically the same as English, but with a few important exceptions. The alphabet is as below,

', B, T, J, X, KH, D, R, S, SH, DH, C, G, F, Q, K, L, M, N, W, H, Y, A, E, I, O, U.

The difficult letters to pronounce are C,Q,X,KH.  If you know Arabic, then C is the same as ('ayn), Q is (qaf) \, X is (ha), and KH is (kha).

A Few Words in Advance

Disclaimer: I'm not a native Somali speaker. But I grew up listening to it, and I want to deepen my knowledge of this language. At the same time I hope I can help those of you who are learning Somali(and you can help me as well), and throw in a few cultural points of interest. Since I am not a native speaker I am basing my blog posts on a few textbooks that I have studied from. You can ask me questions; if I don't know I will say so but will try to find out by asking my family or other native speakers. Probably no one will visit this site, but since there are still few places on the internet where you can find resources about the Somali language, I hope this site will be one of them. That's the goal. Wish me luck.