Ng'ombe = the impossible Swahili word

Here is a picture of how I spend my weekdays at the language school. I am in a group of 3 students and we have native Tanzanian instructors/tutors who rotate every week. This week's teacher is named Abraham. In my group there are two other students. There is a man from Italy, Lucio, who will be managing a Catholic hospital when he is finished at the language school (on my right). The other student (on my left) in my group is named Narooma. She is from Scotland and will be working in Kenya after the language course.

My Swahili studies are going well. Our group has shorter time to study than the other students (we are only staying 2 months instead of 4) so we try to go through more than one lesson a day. Swahili uses the same alphabet as English and pronunciation is almost completely phonetic. However, there are a few words that I have trouble with. One such word is "ng'ombe." Ng'ombe is the Swahili word for cow, and the first syllable (denoted by Ng') is a sound that never appears in the English language. It is a nasal "n" sound merged into the "g" sound. Individuals fluent in German are generally able to say the word perfectly on their first try. (If only Aaron was here!) The traditional American mistake is to say a "ny" sounds when trying to imitate a native Swahili speaker.