Kiswahili on PennMOO

Please note: as of 2002, PennMOO is no longer in use.

PennMOO is a text-based virtual reality. It requires nothing more than an Internet connection and a keyboard in order to meet with other speakers of Kiswahili and converse with them at the meeting place (baraza).

Teachers of Kiswahili can use this facilty and assign different activities for students:

-- 'chat' with other students and native speakers.

-- do role plays

-- do collaborative writing

-- provide descriptions of different places in the virtual East African village (Kijiji).

Teachers can hold office hours on-line and can arrange for 'talks' by invited speakers from other universities in the US and even from other countries.

There are two ways to connect to PennMOO:

  1. by TinyFugue
  2. by Telnet connection (follow this link to connect now by Telnet)
Connecting by TinyFugue is much more convenient, but not everyone has access to TinyFugue (check with your local system administrator to see if you can use TinyFugue). When you log on to PennMOO to converse in Kiswahili, type:
connect kiswahili
in order to log on as a Kiswahili guest. Each time you log on as a Kiswahili guest, you will be assigned a character with a randomly chosen Swahili name.

Here are the basic commands that are useful in PennMOO. These commands are given in English.

The most important thing to know is how to talk. Just type a double quotation mark (") and then type in Kiswahili. When you press the RETURN or ENTER key, other people will see what you have said. For example, if you type
"Hujambo.
you will see:
Unasema, "Hujambo."
and everyone else will see:
[Your character's name] anasema, "Hujambo."

PennMOO is no longer in use. For more information, you may contact Jay Treat

Return to African Languages page
Last Modified: September 23rd, 1997
Alwiya S. Omar, African Language Coordinator