Learn Swati Through Topics You Actually Care About

LingoBear creates short Swati passages on topics you choose. Tap any word for an instant English translation and build your vocabulary as you read. Nguni Bantu language, national language of Eswatini and one of South Africa's 12 official languages, Latin script with click consonants, ~3M speakers.

Tap any word for instant translation

Every word in your Swati reading passage is clickable. Get English translations and grammar help — useful for parsing Nguni noun classes and clicks.

Read about topics you choose

Type any topic and LingoBear generates a fresh Swati reading passage — useful when textbooks are concentrated in Eswatini.

What is Swati and where is it spoken?

Swati (siSwati) is a Nguni Bantu language closely related to Zulu, with around 3 million speakers — the national language of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), and one of the 12 official languages of South Africa, particularly in Mpumalanga. Speakers can largely understand Zulu but the languages have separate standards and identifiable lexical differences.

What's distinctive about Swati phonology and grammar?

Like other Nguni languages, Swati has clicks — the dental c, post-alveolar q and lateral x — borrowed from contact with Khoisan languages, though they appear in fewer Swati words than in Zulu. It has the typical Nguni noun-class system (with 15 active classes) that drives agreement throughout the sentence, and uses umu-/aba- for class 1/2 (people) and isi-/ti- for class 7/8 (things).