I don't know what category to place this in, since it is about me.  I am obviously not Media & Culture, but that's where you find me.  I guess.  Unless that would be in Faith & Family.  I am not in Immigration, Foreign Affairs, or Social Security, although I am fast approaching that category with the fond hope that there will be something left for me when I get there.

Mzee is Swahili for "Old Man".  Being a term of respect in that culture, you don't actually have to be an old man to earn the sobriquet.  What is needed is to show some of the wisdom that is supposed to come with age.  Showing her own perceptive nature, my wife uses it as a pet name for me.

To pronounce the word, or at least to come close to a proper enunciation, you need to know four things about spoken Swahili.  The first is that "M" as the initial syllable of a word is generally said with closed lips, and the phoneme sounds like "umm".  (Actually, there is a fairly wide range of the pronunciation, from that just described to a "Mu" that sounds like your lips got stuck as they were trying to open for the "u".  And lots of variations in-between.)  Your second quick Swahili lesson concerns vowels, and it exposes the other three rules.  The first is that, in Swahili, you say every vowel.  Every one.  There may be exceptions, but I know of none.  The second rule is that you always put the emphasis on the next to the last syllable.  So if you have two "e"s that run togther, as in mzee, you say both of them but emphasize the first.  This sounds like an elongated "e" with a slight bounce.  Oh yes, and the last rule is that Swahili vowels are pronounced like Italian or Spanish vowels.  So the Swahili "e" is more like the English long "a" without the dipthong, the thing we do when we place a short "i" on the end of the vowel.  Go ahead, say "a" and see what I mean.

Put all those rules together now and say "mzee" . . . . Well, okay, I didn't think you would get it right the first time, but a little practice and you'll be saying "old man" in Swahili like a Kenyan.  Oh, one other hint.  As a Kenyan once told me, when speaking Swahili (or, more properly, Kiswahili) it is all in the lips.  Get your lips working and your vowels pure and then I can teach you how to say, "Najua kiswahili ya kuomba maji".

By the way, use those rules with "Kwanzaa" and you will see that it is not even authentic in its common pronunciation.  What do you know.

Enough for tonight, I have to work tomorrow.  Kwa heri ya kuonana.

MzeeMartin