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saliboko	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Saturday, July 03, 2004 3:37 AM (UMST) Ndugu wapendwa, Nadhani 'author' wa hii 'article' ameongea ukweli fulani juu ya uongeaji wa ' English' , Tanzania. Wazazi wengi siku hizi tunapeleka watoto wetu huko Kenya na Uganda zaidi ni kwa ajili ya kujua na kuzungumza lugha ya kiingereza zaidi kuliko kimsingi kujifunza elimu mbalimbali. Kwani hizi elimu nyingine zinapatikana hapa hapa Bongo. Mimi naamini katika huu ulimwengu unaoitwa wa utandawazi ni vyema tukajifunza na kuelewa kuongea lugha hizo za kigeni kama kiingereza na kifaransa n.k. LAKINI ni ukweli kwamba lazima , na narudia lazima tuendeleze kiswahili chetu. Ni lugha tamu na inafaa kuendelezwa kama lugha hasa ya kiafrika. Nadhani mataifa mbalimbali ya nje yameelewa hilo na ndio maana kuna juhudi za kukiendeleza Kiswahili. Ni ndoto yangu kuwa itakuwa lugha ya Umoja wa Mataifa (UN) kama ilivyo “English” na “French”. Na naona hiyo ndoto ikitimia hivi karibuni. Mchango wangu mchache. Phillip Mbeya, Tanzania.
mkandara	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 4:14 PM (UMST) This guy Joachim Buwembo is what we call WANNABE! or in Swahili LIMBUKENI!.....All I see here is how much he wonna kiss whiteman's behind by learning their language. Feel somehow almost white!  Let ask him a question, At what percentage do EUROPEAN speak english fluently? Does it means French, Chunese or Russian are not educated just because they don't speak english?... That's BULL, slave mind all I can say One thing though, with their accent (Kenyan, Ugandan and all other engl;ish speaking Africa countries) I think they DONT speak English! otherwise we wouldn't see subtittles at the bottom of the TVscreen on every enterview  held in those countries!
mnzava	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Friday, July 09, 2004 7:51 AM (UMST) Safi sana , nimekubali !
choveki	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Sunday, July 11, 2004 10:25 AM (UMST) "......I think they DONT speak English! otherwise we wouldn't see subtittles at the bottom of the TVscreen on every enterview  held in those countries" Nice one brother Mkandara!!  'nuff said. choveki.
Admin	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Monday, July 12, 2004 10:53 PM (UMST) Is this a complement? This article was published by an Uganda's privately owned daily news called The Monitor (Kampala) by the same columnists (Mr Buwembo)   Mr.  Buwembo, you must be joking! I would say He was in KYAKA, small town near board of Tanzania and UGANDA, and thought was DAR         Letter from Dar: By Joachim Buwembo East Africa no match for Dar’s politeness July 13, 2004 If you stay longer than one month in Tanzania and want to return home to Uganda or Kenya, you need to remember some bad manners as you take the flight or bus. If you don’t, you might look and sound extremely out of place in Nairobi or Kampala. So you need a crash programme on the plane, revising how to bark at waiters and push people out of the way in corridors. For you do not get a chance to do such ‘normal’ things in Dar es Salaam. NEED ANY HELP? This seemingly helpless lady would get prompt attention from the ever polite Dar residents (File photo). If there is one good thing that was carried over from the days of ‘brotherhood’ when the country was undergoing the socialist experiment, it is the respect for fellow man. On that one, Tanzania is still a classless society, where pomp is frowned upon and modesty in personal conduct is like a national character. The Tanzanians can be painstakingly polite and it can be infectious, at least so I hope. In the first days of living in this vast country, you get surprised, even suspicious at the respect people accord you. Then you realise everybody treats everybody else with respect. It is their way of life. After years of asking for things without saying ‘please’ and a lifetime of forgetting to say ‘thank you’ all the time, a few days in Tanzania are enough to make you feel so unpolished and ill-bred. You stay with these people and you sound like a mannerless brat around the Nakivubo/ Kisenyi environs. You quickly revise your speech manners and wish you had paid more attention at Sunday school. It is a humbling experience, and I know that many Ugandans and Kenyans have taken this late-in-life lesson quietly but deeply in Dar. You arrive at the office for instance in the company of a very senior person and as you ‘importantly’ head for your desk, you see him spare time to greet the cleaner politely. Or it may be in the restaurant where you get your first lesson in applied civility. The customer treats the waitress with a respect that in Kampala might make his female companion scowl. Sometimes it is on the street. Not all streets, I hasten to add. But on many streets in the city centre, should you appear to be searching for something, someone will volunteer to direct you, even walk you part of the way to the place. In Nairobi, it would be unforgivable suicide to accept such directions volunteered by a stranger. In Kampala you would wonder why the person has kamanyiiro, trying to make your problem his business. In Dar it is normal.  There must be bad sides to human relations in Dar, but it is my prayer not to encounter them. After all, there are newspaper reports of thugs mugging people now and then, like it happens elsewhere. But I suppose even they do it with some relative politeness. Just like some of those guys who came to liberate us in 1979 used to politely tell a captured Amin soldier to walk away before calmly dispatching him to hell after he had taken a few steps... When it comes to requesting for something, the politeness thing gets even more amusing. Someone will ask for permission to ask for permission to ask for something. Let us say you are in a restaurant and you find the background music too loud. The normal thing is for you to call the waitress and begin by apologising for putting an unusual request. Then she will even more politely assure you that it is alright for you to state your request. So you proceed to politely ask her to tell you whether it would be in order for you to ask her to ask the manager whether it is okay to ask him to ask the person in charge of the music to reduce the volume. You can now imagine the cultural transition. In Kampala, a very polite person would simply tell the waitress that the music is too loud. An average person would just tell her to have the music reduced. A normal customer with mild stress from the office will ask whether the hotel management thinks people don’t have better music in their homes and came to the restaurant to be harassed by cheap loud noises. I dont know what a really rude person would say. But it would certainly cause enough crisis in an average Dar restaurant for other customers to console the abused staff. So sometimes you long for the ‘normal’ conduct when you can tell fellows what you think of them. If a surbodinate is slow, you need to ask him whether he thinks the company hired him to take a rest and speculate while others work, or something equally mild. But not in Dar. You learn to bottle up your impatience with the slow ones, while not demoralising the fast workers. And by the time you book your ticket for the journey back to Kampala, you have qualified to preach to the Kampalans it is not so important to be important after all.
whoelse	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Monday, July 26, 2004 11:04 AM (UMST) wtsu up ya'll,  i feel ya mr. makandara, this m!!#$%#$#ker is full of s^&t, he finally realized that he messed up and  he is not a man enough  to appologize to all wabongo instead he produced another article telling the entire world  that Tzans and anoyingly polite. what does that has to do with  anything guess what  !!( mr. mbwembo),i think you can make a good writter, i wish you could realize that and start producing some constructive articles. we could apreciate you if you would come up with constructive topics like , how can we prevent hiv, ways to eradicate poverty in africa, true democracy in africa, how to eliminate illiteracy in east africa,  or something close to that, huh. i suggest you shut the f*&k up, and stop boring pple with your behavioural topics, b'se nobody is interested, by the way who lied to you that ugandans and kenyans like to be known for being rude, less enlighted and  uncivilized. you pissed me off  that its not even funny.  you may wanna visit other websites from defferent countries and see what other pple discuss online.  You should 've known that, internet is a powerfull, affordable, globaly accessed media that could be beneficials to developing countries, but that is if and only if  we knew how to take advantage of it. get over your lil pride and make your lil talent usefull. P'ce
OB1KNOB1	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Thursday, February 09, 2006 7:31 AM (UMST) Lighten up folks! I'm sure this Joachim fella was simply being tongue-in-cheek and didn't intend to insult Tanzanians. In any case, let's not pretend Tanzanians never tell jokes about Kenyans and Ugandans. Plus, most of us know a UDSM graduate or two who can barely converse in the English language. What's the big deal? Perhaps I've been away from TZ too long, but have we Tanzanians become so thin-skinned as to lose our sense of humor? You know, the ability to poke fun at our own expense that sustained us through the difficult 70's and 80's. Personally, I found Joachim's piece a tad amusing. Ironically, for someone who purports to critique other people's language skills, Joachim's two pieces on Tanzania clearly demonstrate that his own command of English grammar leaves a lot to be desired. It kind of brings to mind the Kiswahili idiom - Nyani haoni kundule. Perhaps that's the one truism Tanzania hasn't taught Monsieur Buwembo. These lessons do take time, I know. Oh, by the way, I'm a product of the TZ public education system.
Esther	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 9:18 AM (UMST) What does it mean to speak “Good English”?  Is it about rolling and wriggling ones tongue to ape a foreign accent, superfluity in “English” words, or expressing oneself clearly and succinctly enough, delivering the intended message across, undistorted? And who sets the bar for “good” or “poor” English? With my crooked English, am I deemed less intelligent in the eyes of those who speak “Good English”?   Mimi naishi ughaibuni na mpaka leo sielewi maana ya Kiingereza kizuri. Ikiwa ni mambo ya ‘accent’, hata wazungu wenyewe wana hizo ‘accent’ mbalimbali, kutokana na mtu alipokulia. Mwenyeji wa Newyork huongea tofauti na mwenyeji wa Oklahoma. Na si jambo la kustaajabisha kumpata mtu ambaye hawezi  kuongea Kiingereza kamwe. Kuna Warusi, Wajerumani, na WaMexicana ambao hawaifahamu Kiingereza ng’o, na kwao, kuwasiliana na watu toka nyanja zingine huwa vigumu sana. Yabidi wajifunze Kiingereza kama lugha ya pili wanapoingia Vyuo Vikuu, na kuajiriwa kazi huwa ni kazi yenyewe. . . . . Kwa hivyo, good or bad, smooth or edgy my Africa-borne English  makes it easier to communicate with members from other nations. I see language as a vehicle to get me where I am headed. So, whether a Jaguar or a beaten Honda, what matters is that I get to my destination.!
moshi	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 10:11 AM (UMST) Mkandara, Joachim is right to point out our weakness - the English language. Not going far, look at your write-up above: Your grammer needs some touch-up, plural/singular misused, spellings, etc.
mkandara	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Saturday, December 23, 2006 11:12 AM (UMST) Moshi, Have cheked yours?...the English language!
karanid	Dar's politeness Posted: Saturday, January 06, 2007 7:25 AM (UMST) Mr. Buwembo, If you think that Tanzanians are polite, try scandnavians. In Sweden and Finland, for example, te commonest words are täck and kiitos! That is to say thank you, for everything immaginable. And everybody will pen a door for you enywhere!
Nkoba	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 10:00 AM (UMST) As I love Kiswahili and I am proud to tell my work collegues that I am from Tanzania and I can speak three languages fluently Bondei, Swahili and English.  I would prefer my children to know the two languages I do speak.  I will need to make extra effort to make them speak Bondei since their father would no be one!!  I will also be very proud if they will know another European language apart from English. This needs to be introduced from the eary years of a child's life.
kipala	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Saturday, May 05, 2007 7:27 AM (UMST) Nimependa mzaha huo wa Buwembo (Kiswahili kuzaliwa, kukua, kufa, kuzikwa..). Ila tu, kama Uganda imekuwa kaburi la Kiswhahili - wapi mbinguni? Labda mtandaoni? Kama ni hivi, bila shaka chumba kimoja (ling. Injili ya Yohane 14,2) kipo kwenye wikipedia ya Kiswahili http://sw.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mwanzo Wasalaam!
jakwelli	Letter From Dar : The grave of Kiswahilli Posted: Saturday, May 26, 2007 9:52 AM (UMST) Ndugu Buwembo, I must say you remind me of my days at MUK when we used to call persons of your attitude as 'boot lickers', and am afraid you may be taking it a notch up probably to please whoever waives the pay cheque. It beats one's imagination as to what criteria you've used in your assessment, or is it judment that Uganda is the grave of Kiswahili. I have spoken both English and Swahili from as far back as I can remember and as far as I am aware swahili is largely used in business in most areas to the east and north of the river Nile.  There may be some resistence to its use in Kampala and the surrounding areas, but catching up like the consumption of 'kawunga' I've live in the UK for the past 7 years and in that time I've learnt that the owners of the language, ie the English, are so polite that they will not correct you in the event you make glaring gramatical or related errors. To them language is not static and evolves from the original. Here the English that is spoken in say Newcastle sounds quite different from the one spoken in Dundee or Birmingham. And aside from the usual jokes among the 'natives', they get along, albeit with raised eyebrows. The point am trying to make is, can the language one is speaking make them find their way or something to eat? is one able to communicate, I mean speak and be understood or listen and understand. I have come across english people who speak the langauge fluently but do not know how to read and make excuses of not having their reading glasses on. But on the same vein they feel envious that I am tri-lingual and command an eagle's view of both script and spoken word of their language. I know you mean well Mr Buwembo but leave matters of social critique or language for that matter to those in the know and do what you have always done best - report! Samahani ndugu if I have been hard.