Majeda Hourani

Ruman Swahili Picture Dictionary Majeda Hourani

The Ruman Swahili Picture Dictionary is a foldout collection of twenty-two delightful posters targeting different subjects related to our daily lives. Each poster is surrounded by up to thirty-five nouns and five to ten verbs each represented by a unique drawing. This feature allows for the visualization of all vocabulary words without the necessity of including any translation.




This colorful and highly visual dictionary introduces beginners to more than 1550 key vocabulary words in the Swahili language. The posters focus on scenes that are familiar to children, such as home life, the classroom, city life, basic shapes, antonyms, and animals. Learners will be drawn to revisit these detailed depictions of the scenes, each time improving their memory. In addition, this dictionary has main characters that will be followed throughout the posters allowing learners to connect to them.




This dictionary is also highly socially engaged as it purposefully conveys positive messages related to children's rights, ethnic diversity, inclusion of children with disabilities, animal welfare, and gender equality. Ruman believes that these messages of inclusion and diversity reflect the foundations of the culture and society that we want to teach to our children.




The Ruman Swahili Picture Dictionary is intended mainly as a classroom resource to help primary age students consolidate and enlarge their vocabulary. However, it can be also used as a personal learning resource at home. Each dictionary can be accompanied by a set of learning cards developed in order to keep this resource exciting and engaging for the children.