swahili-native-copy

name

swahili-native-copy

description

Native-quality Kiswahili copywriting standard for the website engine. Produces Swahili web, marketing, and product copy that reads as if written by an educated East African native speaker — correct noun-class concord, idiomatic phrasing, respectful register, and zero machine-translation artefacts. Use whenever Kiswahili copy is written, adapted, or reviewed; do not rely on raw translation of English source copy.

Swahili Native Copy

Acknowledgement: Shared by Peter Bamuhigire, techguypeter.com, [phone].

Use when

• Writing any Kiswahili page, section, microcopy, CTA, email, or metadata for a site the engine builds.
• Adapting approved English copy into Kiswahili where the Swahili must stand on its own as native copy, not a translation.
• Reviewing Kiswahili copy (human, translated, or AI-generated) for concord, register, idiom, and spelling before it ships.
• Producing Kiswahili SEO/GEO copy where the target phrasing must be researched natively, not transposed from English.

Do not use when

• The language routing, URL structure, hreflang, or sitemap question is the task — that belongs to i18n.
• The cross-language tone policy or three-language consistency question is the task — that belongs to language-standards.
• The copy is English or French. For French use french-native-copy.

Required inputs

• The source material the Kiswahili copy must convey: the approved English copy, the brand brief, or the raw client facts.
• The audience and market: Tanzania, Kenya, or a wider East African / regional audience. This sets vocabulary depth, code-switching tolerance, and trust conventions.
• The register for the brand: standard respectful Kiswahili sanifu (default for commerce and services), or a warmer peer voice. If unspecified, default to respectful standard.
• The page goal and any conversion or SEO targets the copy must hit.

Workflow

1. Write in Kiswahili sanifu (standard Swahili), the register taught in schools and used in media across Tanzania and Kenya. Avoid Sheng and street slang unless the brief explicitly targets a youth-slang voice. See references/register-and-greetings.md.
2. Write from meaning, not English words. Frame the idea as an East African speaker would, then confirm it carries every required fact. See references/loanwords-and-anglicisms.md.
3. Get noun-class concord right as you write. Every adjective, possessive, demonstrative, number, and verb agreement must match the noun's class (ngeli). This is the single biggest failure of machine translation. See references/noun-classes-and-concord.md.
4. Build verbs correctly and choose the right mood: subjunctive (-e) with tafadhali for soft CTAs, imperative for direct ones, correct negatives. See references/verb-system-and-politeness.md.
5. Raise it to native: greetings in the right register, respectful address, idiom and the occasional methali (proverb), natural collocations. See references/idiom-and-cultural.md.
6. Localize numbers, dates, prices, and any time references; handle the Swahili clock carefully. See references/numbers-time-dates.md.
7. Run the revision checklist, including a concord audit and back-translation test. See references/revision-checklist.md.

Quality standards

• Concord is correct everywhere: kitabu kizuri, vitabu vizuri, huduma bora, bidhaa zetu, mtoto wetu agree by class, with no English-word-order or default-class errors.
• Register is respectful and consistent: greetings, address, and CTAs match Kiswahili sanifu; no accidental slip into slang or into another dialect mid-page.
• Loanwords follow native norms: integrated Arabic loans used freely (asante, karibu, safari), English handled the native way (barua pepe for email, tovuti for website, simu ya mkononi for mobile), bare English avoided.
• Spelling and orthography are standard: correct use of ng' (with apostrophe), ny, ch, dh, gh, th; no English-influenced spellings.
• SEO terms are researched in Kiswahili, not transposed; the slug and target phrase are what an East African actually searches, per i18n slug rules.
• The copy passes the back-translation test: translating back to English reproduces the intended meaning without distortion.

Anti-patterns

• Translating English word-for-word and producing broken concord (kubwa nyumba instead of nyumba kubwa; letu duka instead of duka letu).
• Default-class agreement: forcing M-/WA- (human) concord onto non-human nouns, or ignoring the N-class behaviour of family terms (dada yangu, not dada wangu).
• Calques such as Karibu kwa tovuti for "Welcome to the website", or bare email, online, website left untranslated.
• Mixing Tanzanian and Kenyan conventions or sliding into Sheng in copy meant to be standard.
• Mishandling the Swahili clock so opening hours or times are six hours off.
• Inventing marketing adjectives banned by glossary.md#banned-terms in their Swahili equivalents.

Outputs

• Native-quality Kiswahili copy for the requested artefact (page, section, CTA, email, metadata).
• A short register-and-audience note recording the market (Tanzania/Kenya/regional) and voice decision so downstream copy stays consistent.
• Review findings with concrete corrections when the task is a review rather than fresh authoring.

References

• references/noun-classes-and-concord.md — the ngeli system and agreement across adjectives, possessives, demonstratives, numbers, and verbs.
• references/verb-system-and-politeness.md — verb structure, tenses, negatives, imperative and subjunctive, tafadhali, polite requests.
• references/register-and-greetings.md — Kiswahili sanifu, greetings by register, honorifics, plural-of-respect, dialect and slang lines.
• references/idiom-and-cultural.md — collocations, trust language, methali, and East African cultural conventions for copy.
• references/loanwords-and-anglicisms.md — Arabic loans, English-word handling, calques to avoid, Tanzania vs Kenya usage.
• references/numbers-time-dates.md — numbers with concord, the Swahili clock, days, months, dates, and currency.
• references/revision-checklist.md — native-speaker QA checklist, concord audit, and back-translation test.

Notes

• This skill is the Kiswahili execution layer under language-standards, which owns the cross-language tone policy. Read language-standards for the three-language consistency rules, then apply this skill for Kiswahili.
• Pair with i18n for routing and localized slugs, with africa-excellence for low-bandwidth and East African trust patterns, and with seo/google-ai-search for Kiswahili keyword research.
• Source material distilled from: Oswald Almasi, Michael David Fallon et al., Swahili Grammar for Introductory and Intermediate Levels (Sarufi ya Kiswahili); Joan Russell, Swahili (Teach Yourself); Lutz Marten & Donovan Lee McGrath, Colloquial Swahili; and Swahili (Spoken World) (Living Language).