Swahili language

For other uses, see Swahili (disambiguation).
Swahili
Kiswahili
Native to Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Mozambique (mostly Mwani), Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, Uganda,[1] Comoros, Mayotte and the margins of Zambia, Malawi, Madagascar, and South Sudan
Native speakers
 5 million (2007)[2] to 15 million (2012)[3]
150+ million speakers in total[4]
Latin script (Roman Swahili alphabet),
Arabic script (Arabic Swahili alphabet)
Swahili Braille
Official status
Official language in
 Tanzania Tanzania
Kenya Kenya
Uganda Uganda
Democratic Republic of the Congo Democratic Republic of the Congo
Comoros Comoros
Zanzibar Zanzibar
African Union
East African Community
Regulated by Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa (Tanzania), Chama cha Kiswahili cha Taifa (Kenya)
Language codes
ISO 639-1 sw
ISO 639-2 swa
ISO 639-3 swa – inclusive code
Individual codes:
swc – Congo Swahili
swh – Coastal Swahili
ymk – Makwe
wmw – Mwani
Glottolog swah1254[5]
G.42–43;
G.40.A–H (pidgins & creoles)[6]
Linguasphere 99-AUS-m

  Coastal areas where Swahili or Comorian is the indigenous language,
  official or national language,
  and trade language. As a trade language, Swahili extends some distance further to the northwest.

Swahili, also known as Kiswahili, is a Bantu language and the first language of the Swahili people. It is a lingua franca of the African Great Lakes region and other parts of Southeast Africa, including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[7] The closely related Comorian language, spoken in the Comoros Islands, is sometimes considered a dialect.

Although only around five to fifteen million people speak Swahili as their first language, it is used as a lingua franca in much of Southeast Africa. Estimates of the total number of Swahili speakers vary widely, from 60 million to over 150 million.[8] Swahili serves as a national language of four nations: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Shikomor, the official language in Comoros and also spoken in Mayotte (Shimaore), is related to Swahili. Swahili is also one of the working languages of the African Union and one of the official languages of the East African Community.

A significant fraction of Swahili vocabulary is derived from Arabic through contact with Arabic-speaking Muslim inhabitants of the Swahili Coast.[9] It has also incorporated German, Portuguese, English, Hindustani, and French words into its vocabulary through contact with empire builders, traders, and slavers during the past five centuries.

History

Origin

Although originally written with the Arabic script, Swahili is now written in a Latin alphabet introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators. The text shown here is the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer.[10]

Swahili is traditionally regarded as being the language of coastal areas of Tanzania and Kenya. It was formalised after independence by presidents of the African Great Lakes region but first spoken by natives of the coastal mainland. It spread as a fisherman's language to the various islands surrounding the Swahili Coast. Traders from these islands had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 2nd century A.D., and Swahili began to spread along the Swahili Coast from at least the 6th century. There is also cultural evidence of early Zaramo people settlement on Zanzibar from Dar es Salaam in present-day Tanzania.

Clove farmers from Oman[11] and the Persian Gulf farmed the Zanzibar Archipelago, slowly spreading Islam, adding a few words to Swahili, and building forts and castles in major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, and Barawa to the north in southern Somalia. Demand for cloves soon led to the establishment of permanent trade routes, and Swahili-speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process started the development of the modern Swahili language.

The earliest known documents written in Swahili are letters written in Kilwa in 1711 A.D. in the Arabic script that were sent to the Portuguese of Mozambique and their local allies. The original letters are now preserved in the Historical Archives of Goa, India.[12] Another ancient written document dated to 1728 is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka (The History of Tambuka).

Swahili in Arabic script—memorial plate at the Askari Monument, Dar es Salaam

Colonial period

After Germany attacked the region known as Tanganyika (present-day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide prevalence of Swahili and soon designated Swahili as a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both sought to facilitate their rule over colonies where the inhabitants spoke dozens of different languages and so the colonial authorities selected a single local language, which they hoped the natives would find acceptable. Swahili was the only good candidate in the two colonies.

In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of British Christian missionary institutions that were active in these colonies, increased their resolve to institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low-level governance throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education and governance at the highest levels would be conducted in English.

One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an inter-territorial conference took place at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili.[13] Today's standard Swahili, the version taught as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili even though there are minor discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.

Current status

Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three African Great Lakes countries (Tanzania, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)) where it is an official or national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary schools in 1992 although this mandate has not been well implemented, and it declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation.

Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, the Comoros, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique.[14] and the language was still understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf in the twentieth century.[11][15]

Some 80 percent of approximately 49 million Tanzanians speak Swahili in addition to their first languages.[16] Many of the rising generation of Tanzania, however, speak Swahili as a primary language because of a decrease of the traditional cultures and the rise of a more unified culture in urban areas.

Kenya's population is comparable as well, with a greater part of the nation being able to speak Swahili. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one to high school and a distinct academic discipline in many of the public and private universities.

The five eastern provinces of the DRC are Swahili-speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese reportedly speak it,[17] and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country.

In Uganda, the Baganda and residents of Buganda generally do not speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country.

The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated and is widespread only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili speakers may number 120 to 150 million.[18] Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence.

Methali (e.g. Haraka haraka haina baraka – Hurry hurry has no blessing),[19] i.e. "wordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegory".[20] Methali is uncovered globally within 'Swah' rap music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical and local textures and insight.

Name

Kiswahili is the Swahili word for the language and is also sometimes used in English. The name Swahili comes from the plural sawāḥil (سواحل) of the Arabic word sāḥil (ساحل), meaning "boundary" or "coast", used as an adjective meaning "coastal dwellers". (The same word is the origin of the term Sahel.) With the prefix ki-, it means "coastal language", ki- being a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class such as languages.

Phonology

Vowels

Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: /ɑ/, /ɛ/, /i/, /ɔ/, and /u/. Pronunciation of /u/ is between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]. Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress, but they are pronounced in full as follows:

Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately so the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced /tʃu.i/, as two syllables.

Consonants

Labial Dental Alveolar Postalveolar
/ palatal		 Velar Glottal
Nasal m /m/ n /n/ ny /ɲ/ ng’ /ŋ/
Stop prenasalized mb /ᵐb/   nd /ⁿd/ nj /ᶮɟ ~ ⁿdʒ/ ng /ᵑɡ/
implosive b /ɓ/ d /ɗ/ j /ʄ/ g /ɠ/
tenuis p /p/ t /t/ ch /tʃ/ k /k/
aspirated (p /pʰ/) (t /tʰ/) (ch /tʃʰ/) (k /kʰ/)
Fricative prenasalized mv /ᵐv/ nz /ⁿz/
voiced v /v/ (dh /ð/) z /z/ (gh /ɣ/)
voiceless f /f/ (th /θ/) s /s/ sh /ʃ/ (kh /x/) h /h/
Flap r /ɾ/
Approximant l /l/ y /j/ w /w/

Notes:

Orthography

Swahili Arabic script on a one-pysar coin from Zanzibar circa 1299 AH (1882 AD)
Swahili Arabic script on a carved wooden door (open) at Lamu in Kenya
Swahili Arabic script on wooden door in Fort Jesus, Mombasa in Kenya
Swahili in Arabic script on the clothes of a woman in Tanzania (ca. early 1900s).

Swahili is currently written in a slightly defective alphabet using the Latin script; the defectiveness comes in that it does not distinguish aspirated consonants, but in some dialects, pronunciation does not distinguish them anyway. (These were, however, distinguished as kh etc. in the old German colonial Latin alphabet.) There are two digraphs for native sounds, ch and sh; c is not used apart from unassimilated English loans and, occasionally, as a substitute for k in advertisements. There are also several digraphs for Arabic sounds not distinguished in pronunciation outside of traditional Swahili areas.

The language used to be written in the Arabic script. Unlike adaptations of the Arabic script for other languages, relatively little accommodation was made for Swahili. There were also differences in orthographic conventions between cities and authors and over the centuries, some quite precise but others defective enough to cause difficulties with intelligibility.

Vowel diacritics were generally written, effectively making the Swahili-Arabic script an abugida. /e/ and /i/, /o/ and /u/ were often conflated, but in some orthographic, /e/ was distinguished from /i/ by rotating the kasra 90° and /o/ was distinguished from /u/ by writing the damma backwards.

Several Swahili consonants do not have equivalents in Arabic, and for them, often no special letters were created unlike, for example, in Persian and Urdu scripts. Instead, the closest Arabic sound is substituted. Not only that meant that one letter often stands for more than one sound but also writers made different choices on which consonant to substitute.Here are some of the equivalents between Arabic Swahili and Roman Swahili:

Arabic
Swahili		Roman
Swahili
ا aa
ب b p mb mp bw pw mbw mpw
ت t nt
ث th?
ج j nj ng ng' ny
ح h
خkh h
د d nd
ذ dh?
ر r d nd
ز z nz
س s
ش sh ch
ص s, sw
ض dhw
ط t tw chw
ظ z th dh dhw
ع ?
غ gh g ng ng'
ف f fy v vy mv p
ق k g ng ch sh ny
ك
ل l
م m
ن n
ه h
و w
ي y ny

That was the general situation, but conventions from Urdu were adopted by some authors such as to distinguish aspiration and /p/ from /b/: پھا /pʰaa/ 'gazelle', پا /paa/ 'roof'. Although it is not found in Standard Swahili today, there is a distinction between dental and alveolar consonants in some dialects, which is reflected in some orthographies, for example in كُٹَ -kuta 'to meet' vs. كُتَ -kut̠a 'to be satisfied'. A k with the dots of y, ڱ, was used for ch in some conventions; ky being historically and even contemporaneously a more accurate transcription than Roman ch. In Mombasa, it was common to use the Arabic emphatics for Cw, for example in صِصِ swiswi (standard sisi) 'we' and كِطَ kit̠wa (standard kichwa) 'head'.

Word division differs from Roman norms. Particles such as ya, na, si, kwa, ni are joined to the following noun, and possessives such as yangu and yako are joined to the preceding noun, but verbs are written as two words, with the subject and tense–aspect–mood morphemes separated from the object and root, as in aliye niambia "he who asked me".[21]

Grammar

Noun classes

In common with all other Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes (counting singular and plural separately, according to the Meinhof convention), with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns and three classes to indicate location.

classsemanticsprefixsingulartranslationpluraltranslation
1, 2 persons m-/mu-, wa- mtu person watu persons
3, 4 trees, natural forces m-/mu-, mi- mti tree miti trees
5, 6 groups, AUG Ø/ji-, ma- jicho eye macho eyes
7, 8 artefacts, DIM ki-, vi- kisu knife visu knives
9, 10 animals, loanwords, other Ø/n-, Ø/n- ndoto dream ndoto dreams
11, 12 extension u-, Ø/n- ua fence, yard nyua fences
14 abstraction u- utoto childhood –

Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people: mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants: mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-: kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are more difficult to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi- and often refer to hand tools and other artefacts. The ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words if the ki- was originally part of the root: vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitāb "book"; Arabic itself deals similarly with Alexandria). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili) and diminutives, which was a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural: utoto 'childhood'.

A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes.

singular   plural
 
mtotommojaanasoma watotowawiliwanasoma
childoneis reading childrentwoare reading
One child is reading Two children are reading
 
kitabukimojakinatosha vitabuviwilivinatosha
bookonesuffices bookstwosuffice
One book is enough Two books are enough
 
ndizimojainatosha ndizimbilizinatosha
bananaonesuffices bananastwosuffice
One banana is enough Two bananas are enough

The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artefact kiti (viti) "chair(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".

Semantic motivation

The ki-/vi- class historically consisted of two separate genders, artefacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils and hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12), which were conflated at a stage ancestral to Swahili. Examples of the former are kisu "knife", kiti "chair" (from mti "tree, wood"), chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to diminutives in many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish in English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades", from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore is marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs").

Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example. However, it seems to cover vital entities neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things, as in many other languages with noun classes. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Animals exceptional in some way and so not easily fitting in the other classes may be placed in this class.

The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive.[22] In short,

Verb affixation

Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) that can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense, and subordinate clauses, which require a conjunction in languages such as English.

Verbs of Bantu origin end in '-a' in the indicative. This vowel changes to indicate the subjunctive and negation.

In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their indicative root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, as ninakata 'I cut'. Here, ni- means 'I', and na- indicates a specific time (present tense unless stated otherwise).

Verb conjugation

ni--na-kata
1sgDEF. TIMEcut/chop
'I am cutting (it)'

This sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix:

u--na-kata
2sgDEF. TIMEcut/chop
'You are cutting'
u--me-kata
2sgPERFECTcut/chop
'You have cut'

The animate/human subject and object prefixes, with the m-/wa- (human class) in the third person, are these:

Subject
prefixes
Person Sg.Pl.
1st ni-tu-
2nd u-m-
3rd a-wa-
   
Object
prefixes
Person Sg.Pl.
1st -ni--tu-
2nd -ku--wa- (-mu-)
3rd -m--wa-

In Standard Swahili, 2pl and 3pl objects are both -wa-. However, in Nairobi Swahili, 2pl is -mu-.

The most common tense prefixes are these:

Tense and mood prefixes
-a-gnomic (indefinite time)
-na-definite time (often present progressive)
-me-perfect
-li-past
-ta-future
hu-habitual (does not take subject prefix)
-ki-conditional

The indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix is used for generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowels of the subject prefixes are assimilated. Thus, nasoma means 'I read', although colloquially, it is also short for ninasoma.

Persons in gnomic tense
1st na-twa-
2nd wa-mwa-
3rd a-wa-
na-soma
1sg:GNOMread
'I read'
mwa-soma
2pl:GNOMread
'You (pl) read'

Conditional:

ni-ki-nunua nyama ya ng'ombe soko-ni, ni-ta-pika leo.
'If I buy cow meat at the market, I'll cook it today.'

The English conjunction 'if' is translated by -ki-.

A third prefix is the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and refers a particular object, either a person or rather as "the" does in English:

a-na-mw-ona
3sgDEF.T.3sg.OBJsee
'He (is) see(ing) him/her'
ni-na-mw-onamtoto
1sgDEF.T.3sg.OBJseechild
'I (am) see(ing) the child'

The -a suffix listed by dictionaries is the positive indicative mood. Other forms occur with negation and the subjunctive, as in sisomi:

si-som--i
1sg.NEG:PRESreadNEG
'I am not reading/ I don't read'

Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the subjunctive in -e. That goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a; Arabic-derived verbs do not change their final vowel.

Other suffixes are placed before the end vowel, such as the applicative -i- and passive -w-:

wa-na-pig-w-a
3plDEF.T.hitPASSIVEIND.
'They are being hit'

Agreement

Swahili phrases agree with nouns in a system of concord, but if the noun refers to a human, they accord with noun classes 1-2 regardless of their noun class. Verbs agree with the noun class of their subjects and objects; adjectives, prepositions and demonstratives agree with the noun class of their nouns. In Standard Swahili (Kiswahili sanifu), based on the dialect spoken in Zanzibar, the system is rather complex; however, it is drastically simplified in many local variants where Swahili is not a native language, such as in Nairobi. In non-native Swahili, concord reflects only animacy: human subjects and objects trigger a-, wa- and m-, wa- in verbal concord, while non-human subjects and objects of whatever class trigger i-, zi-. Infinitives vary between standard ku- and reduced i-.[23] ("Of" is animate wa and inanimate ya, za.)

In Standard Swahili, human subjects and objects of whatever class trigger animacy concord in a-, wa- and m-, wa-, and non-human subjects and objects trigger a variety of gender-concord prefixes.

Swahili noun-class concord
NCSemantic
field		Noun
-C, -V		Subj.Obj-aAdjective
-C, -i, -e[* 1]
1 person m-, mw- a- m- wa m-, mwi-, mwe-
2 people wa-, w- wa- wa- wa wa-, we-, we-
3 tree m- u- wa m-, mwi-, mwe-
4 trees mi- i- ya mi-, mi-, mye-
5 group, AUG ji-/Ø, j- li- la ji-/Ø, ji-, je-
6 groups, AUG ma- ya- ya ma-, mi-, me-
7 tool, DIM ki-, ch- ki- cha ki-, ki-, che-
8 tools, DIM vi-, vy- vi- vya vi-, vi-, vye-
9 animals, 'other',
loanwords		 N- i- ya N-, nyi-, nye-
10 zi- za
11 extension u-, w-/uw- u- wa m-, mwi-, mwe-
10 (plural of 11) N- zi- za N-, nyi-, nye-
14 abstraction u-, w-/uw- u- wa m-, mwi-, mwe-
or u-, wi-, we-
15 infinitives ku-, kw-[* 2] ku- kwa- ku-, kwi-, kwe-
16 position -ni, mahali pa- pa pa-, pi-, pe-
17 direction, around -ni ku- kwa ku-, kwi-, kwe-
18 within, along -ni mu- mwa mu-, mwi-, mwe-
  1. ↑ Most Swahili adjectives begin with either a consonant or the vowels i- or e-, listed separately above. The few adjectives beginning with other vowels do not agree with all noun classes since some are restricted to humans. NC 1 m(w)- is mw- before a and o, and reduces to m- before u; wa- does not change; and ki-, vi-, mi- become ch-, vy-, my- before o but not before u: mwanana, waanana "gentle", mwororo, waororo, myororo, chororo, vyororo "mild, yielding", mume, waume, kiume, viume "male".
  2. ↑ In a few verbs: kwenda, kwisha

Dialects and closely related languages

This list is based Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.

Dialects

Modern standard Swahili is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar Town, but there are numerous dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, such as the following:[24]

Old dialects

Maho (2009) considers these to be distinct languages:

The rest of the dialects are divided by him into two groups:

Maho includes the various Comorian dialects as a third group. Other authorities consider Comorian to be a Sabaki language, distinct from Swahili.

Historically recent varieties

Other regions

In Somalia, where the Afro-Asiatic Somali language predominates, a variant of Swahili referred to as Chimwiini (also known as Chimbalazi) is spoken along the Benadir coast by the Bravanese people.[25] Another Swahili dialect known as Kibajuni also serves as the mother tongue of the Bajuni minority ethnic group, which lives in the tiny Bajuni Islands as well as the southern Kismayo region.[25][26]

In Oman, an estimated 22,000 people speak Swahili.[27] Most are descendants of those repatriated after the fall of the Sultanate of Zanzibar.[28][29]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Thomas J. Hinnebusch, 1992, "Swahili", International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford, pp. 99–106
    David Dalby, 1999/2000, The Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities, Linguasphere Press, Volume Two, pg. 733–735
    Benji Wald, 1994, "Sub-Saharan Africa", Atlas of the World's Languages, Routledge, pp. 289–346, maps 80, 81, 85
  2. ↑ Nationalencyklopedin "Världens 100 största språk 2007" The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007
  3. ↑ Swahili at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Congo Swahili at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Coastal Swahili at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Makwe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Mwani at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  4. ↑ "HOME - Home". Swahililanguage.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
  5. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Swahili (G.40)". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  6. ↑ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
  7. ↑ Prins 1961
  8. ↑ Irele, Abiola and Biodun Jeyifo. The Oxford encyclopedia of African thought, Volume 1. Oxford University Press US. New York City. 2010. ISBN 0-19-533473-6
  9. ↑ The Routledge Concise Compendium of the World's Languages (2nd ed.), George L. Campbell and Gareth King. Routledge (2011), p. 678. ISBN 978-0-415-47841-0
  10. ↑ "Baba yetu". Wikisource. Retrieved 15 November 2015.
  11. 1 2 Kharusi, N. S. (2012). "The ethnic label Zinjibari: Politics and language choice implications among Swahili speakers in Oman". Ethnicities 12 (3): 335–353. doi:10.1177/1468796811432681.
  12. ↑ E.A. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa, London, 1975, pp. 98–99 ; T. Vernet, "Les cités-Etats swahili et la puissance omanaise (1650–1720), Journal des Africanistes, 72(2), 2002, pp. 102–105.
  13. ↑ Whiteley 1969: 80
  14. ↑ Nurse & Thomas Spear (1985) The Swahili
  15. ↑ Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins (1961) The Swahili-speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast. (Ethnologue)
  16. ↑ Brock-Utne 2001: 123
  17. ↑ Kambale, Juakali (2004-08-10). "DRC welcomes Swahili as an official AU language". Mail & Guardian. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
  18. ↑ (2005 World Bank Data).
  19. ↑ Swahili proverbs Kishwahili.net, retrieved 10 March 2013
  20. ↑ Lemelle, Sidney J. "'Ni wapi Tunakwenda': Hip Hop Culture and the Children of Arusha." In The Vinyl Ain't Final: Hip Hop and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture, ed. by Dipannita Basu and Sidney J. Lemelle, 230-54. London; Ann Arbor, Michigan. Pluto in Pres
  21. ↑ Jan Knappert (1971) Swahili Islamic poetry, Volume 1
  22. ↑ See Contini-Morava for details.
  23. ↑ Kamil Ud Deen, 2005. The acquisition of Swahili.
  24. ↑ H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
  25. 1 2 "Somalia". Ethnologue. 1999-02-19. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
  26. ↑ Mwakikagile, Godfrey (2007). Kenya: identity of a nation. New Africa Press. p. 102. ISBN 0-9802587-9-0.
  27. ↑ "Oman". Ethnologue. 1999-02-19. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
  28. ↑ Fuchs, Martina (2011-10-05). "African Swahili music lives on in Oman". Reuters. Retrieved 2015-11-15.
  29. ↑ Beate Ursula Josephi, Journalism education in countries with limited media freedom, Volume 1 of Mass Communication and Journalism, (Peter Lang: 2010), p.96.

References

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Swahili
Swahili edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Swahili language.
Wikivoyage has a phrasebook for Swahili.
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