Chichewa

My friend Christopher is from Malawi, and today Adam and I have been trying to learn a few phrases in Chichewa, the native language spoken in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Apparently it's very close to Swahili in terms of phonetics and language structure, and Christopher says they even share a lot of the same words. All vowels are pronounced separately, and I believe every word ends with a vowel as well. And when a noun starts with an m, you simply have to add an i afterwards to make it plural.

mtengo=tree
mitengo=trees

mkango=lion
mikango=lions

I'm having a lot of fun trying to pick up some words that I can use here at the World Centre. How cool would it be to learn Chichewa?