Jeremia: at the next junction, we go light .
I: What is right in Kiswahili, Jeremia?
Jeremia: Kuria
I: OK, so I can easily remember it: kuria has the r of "right"...
Jeremia: Yes, the r of "light".

(In fact it is "right", but written in Kiswahili as kulia with the l of left!)

Now funny as this is, it is not simply a matter of a Kiswahili speaker unable to properly pronounce Engrish. After all, when Jeremia pronounces kulia, written with l in his own language, I clearly hear kuria. So at least is is surely also a matter of me, an English speaker, having probrems relating Kiswahili speech to Kiswahili liting. Here in Mwanza, I really hear "probrems" for problems and "liting" for writing. This proves that the consonants "l" and "r" are both well within the capacity of the Kiswahili speaker and they are both in use in Kiswahili! Then how to explain the probrem?

Kiswahili writers took the western alphabet and made some choices there. Its seems to me that the project of alphabetizing Kiswahili suffered some western colonialist's misunderstandings of the Bantu sounds Kiswahili is spoken with. After all, Kiswahili started off as Bantu made easy for communication between tribes speaking different Bantu languages and dialects.

Preliminary exercise : the "N class" really is the (mnoka)-class

The problem of the "alphabetizers", the ones who choose a writing for a language is that every language has over one thousand sounds. Those should be grouped together to limit the number of letters. Letters become a summary of a sound group. Some examples of how sounds were grouped in alphabetizing English:

a: gate, path, pat etc
e: beep, better etc
i: bite, bit etc
o: open, rotten etc
u: pump, push etc
th: that, thick (vocal/non vocal th)
g: get, hedge wrights, plough, tough etc.

It is a dirty job, don't envy the guys who did it. The problem invariably is: should we give this sound another letter or treat it as "the same letter but pronounced differently"? In practice, despite the need to economize on the number of letters, they often even found reasons to spell highly similar sounds differently in different words (row and plough, crew and blue)! Now, I do not know who did that job for the Kiswahili spoken language, but one chose for giving "m" and "n" sounds different letters, where in real Kiswahili they 'd better said to be the same letter pronounced differently.

To illustrate: in Kiswahili there is an "N-class" of words that most often start with n. But if n is followed by, for instance, b, this n "becomes" an m, as the Kiswahili student is explained. So the alphabetizer should have introduced one symbol, m or n, or, what we do here for convenience, another one, which I baptize the mnoka: . The is pronounced western "n" if followed by... and western "m" if followed by... . In Kiswahili it is really one single type of "consonant" pronounced differently according to the circumstances. For instance, nyumba nzuri is a good house, nyumba mbaya is a bad house

house good bad	nyumba	nzuri	mbaya
banana good bad	ndizi	nzuri	mbaya
rain good bad	mvua	nzuri	mbaya
seed good bad	mbegu	nzuri	mbaya

I would better to re-alphabetize and substitute for all blue letters in the table above, just explaining under which circumstances it is pronounced western "m" and when as western "n" (those are very easy and generally valid rules). Fortunately, western and Kiswahili pronouncing are not at odds here, neither is the hearing: to both kinds of native speakers, it is clear how to pronounce an "n" and how to pronounce and "m", both clearly distinguish "m" from "n" in hearing, and the pronouncing and hearing distinctions are the same for both kinds of native speakers. All this is not a problem in understanding Kiswahili. Hence I do not propose to introduce the Kiswahili mnoka () in writing. It would be better to have it, but it is not worth the effort. This was an exercise for your mind before introducing the randa, where there is a real problem of speaking and understanding.

Introducing the (randa)

The symbol for the Kiswahili randa is used for every consonant sound "between" l, r, and d in Kiswahili. This is my explanation:

The Kiswahili number 2 is written mbili. In Mwanza, a westerner learning not from books but by hearing might acquire mbili or mbiri (very short rolling r), or mbidi. This is not because different Kiswahili speakers pronounce the word so differently, but because in this case the really is pronounced as something in the middle ground between the the word sound pigeon holes "l", "r" and "d" of the undeveloped western ear. Let me try to help the reader develop it with some mouth exercises:

To change tip-of-tongue rolling r in l, your tongue does not move. All you do is pulling up left and right side of your tongue to close the local gap between tongue and palate. Try saying sustained, with smallest mouth movements possible:

rrrrrrrrrrrrlllllllllllllllrrrrrrrrrrrrrrlllllllllll.

Now say, with smallest mouth movements possible

rrrrrrrrrrrrlllllllllllllllrrrrrrrrrrrrrrllllllllllld

Now say, with smallest mouth movements possible

d  dr  drr drrr drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr drrr dr d

Make your d as thin as you can.

A rolling "r " (tip of tongue) pronounced on tape, played back in slow speed, really sounds like dddddddddddddddd.

If you succeed in these three exercises (take a few minutes!), you will notice your mouth can limit itself to making only very small movements to go from one "letter" to the other. These result in not only three (western "r", "l" and "d") sounds, but many shades and variations of sound. Solely using the different pronunciations of one could build a complete language! Congratulations! You have acquired the randa experience !

Funny enough, clearly pronouncing the "l" in "mbili" as an English "l" puts you more off the mark. than the two other options "r" and "l". The picture below gives you my hearing (which was different earlier, and undoubtedly will be different as I develop my Kiswahili)

Picture: The triangle with the of  "mbi i" positioned

In the triangle above, the  can be pronounced near l, near r, near d, and anywhere in between. In mbi i : is far from l, between r and d, somewhat closer to r (very short rolling r) than to d. I would not be surprised if native Kiswahili speakers could distinguish something like two handfuls of randa-pronunciations. Few of them know this consciously, of course, but the appropriate speaking an hearing test can bring this out.

My proposal is not to abolish altogether the l, r, and d in Kiswahili. It is to introduce the in all words in which a sound is produced (for westerners: a sound in the l-r-d-triangle) according to the general standard for Kiswahili pronunciation of  in words. If the word's pronunciation is an exception to those rules, can be substituted by western i, r, or d. Of course, no proposal like this can be a perfect solution. 

Conclusion: No Plobrem? Not a funny defect of Kiswahili speakers' Engish but a slight hearing and pronunciation underdevelopment among Engrish and other western speakers. Westerners can develop the required speech and hearing capacities may be not to a perfect, but to a satisfactory level within a few days. No Pobem!

The Kiswahili randa (): some pronunciation examples