Swahili Language

Swahili is a traditional language spoken throughout much of East Africa and other parts of the African continent. Scholars believe that Swahili originated with the Bantu-speaking people who settled along Africa's eastern coast around 800 CE. Continuous contact with Arab, Persian, and other foreign traders strongly influenced the linguistic development of Swahili over time, as evidenced by many of the borrowed words still used in the language's contemporary form.

Today Swahili enjoys unique status both as one of Africa's most widely understood languages and as the only African language recognized as an official working language of the African Union. Approximately 50 million people worldwide speak Swahili.

History and Classification

Due to a lack of reliable historical evidence, the exact details of Swahili's linguistic genesis are difficult to ascertain. The evidence that does exist suggests that it first emerged around 800 CE, when the migratory Bantu-speaking people from the African Great Lakes region arrived at the continent's eastern coast.

Originally part of the Sabaki subgroup of Northeastern Coast Bantu languages, Swahili eventually separated from its Bantu roots as its number of speakers grew. From there, Swahili took its first steps toward becoming a major language as these early speakers—typically called Swahilis—established a permanent coastal settlement somewhere near the mouth of the Tana River in northern Kenya. As the Swahilis were active maritime traders, their language gradually came into widespread use all along the East African coast from Mogadishu in what is now southern Somalia to Cape Delgado, the northernmost point of present-day Mozambique. In addition to contributing to its geographic spread, the trade activities of the early Swahilis also significantly impacted the language's linguistic development. Close trade relations between the Swahilis and Arabs, Persians, and other merchants—as well as the spread of Islam—facilitated a sort of cultural exchange that ultimately led to the adoption of many foreign loanwords into traditional Swahili.

By the eighteenth century, the Swahili coastal city-states had earned a place among the leading Indian Ocean trading hubs and enjoyed a period of great political and economic influence. During this period, Swahili poetry first flourished, and many of the earliest surviving Swahili manuscripts were written. Among these, most notably, was the 1728 epic poem Utendi wa Tambuka ("The Story of Tambuka"), which focuses on the events of the Byzantine-Arab Wars (629–1050s CE) and the Byzantine-Ottoman Wars (1265–1479 CE).

The spread of Swahili was further facilitated in the nineteenth century in part because Zanzibar, an archipelago in what is now Tanzania, became the capital of the Sultanate of Oman. At the same time, Swahili traders began to pursue the establishment of trading routes into the African interior, taking their language with them.

When the Swahili-speaking regions of Africa came under colonial control in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Swahili often was used as both an official language of administration by colonial leaders and as a means of interethnic communication among the members of anticolonial factions, thus allowing for its continued spread. Crucially, an international standard version of Swahili based on a particularly educated dialect spoken in Zanzibar was developed in British-controlled portions of Kenya and Tanzania by the Inter-Territorial Language Committee in 1930. Later, when the East African colonies eventually shed their colonial governance, the newly independent countries of Kenya and Tanzania both adopted Swahili as an official language.

Geographic Distribution and Modern Usage

Today most sources agree that about 50 million people worldwide speak Swahili, though some estimates suggest that the true number may be as high as 150 million. It is most widely used in Tanzania, where it is still the official language, and Kenya, where it is considered a national language alongside English, which is the official language. It also is used prominently in Uganda and Zaire's eastern provinces. To a lesser extent, Swahili is spoken in Somalia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Malawi, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Zambia, and Burundi. Elsewhere, Swahili is spoken in certain communities found in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western countries.

Despite the prominence of English in many East African countries, the role Swahili plays in politics, media, commerce, education, and culture in general continues to grow, especially in that region's major urban centers. Additionally, Swahili has the unique distinction of being the only African language officially recognized as one of the working languages of the African Union, an international union of African states that seeks to promote peace and cooperation among its members.

Modern Swahili includes a broad range of distinct dialects. In addition to Standard Swahili, which is also known as Kiunguja, other regional dialects include the Kimakunduchi and Kitumbatu, both of which are spoken in rural Zanzibar; Kipemba, which is spoken on Pemba Island, part of the Zanzibar Archipelago; Kimtang'ata, which is spoken in and around Tanga, Tanzania; Kimrima, which is spoken along the Tanzanian coast; Kimvita, which is spoken in and around Mombasa, Kenya; Kiamu, Kipate, and Kisiu, which are spoken on the Lamu Archipelago in Kenya; Kitikuu, which is spoken on the Lamu Archipelago and in the coastal towns of northern Kenya and southern Somalia; Kivumba, which is spoken on Wasini Island and Vanga in Kenya; Kingwana, which is spoken in Zaire; and others.

Bibliography

"About the Swahili Language." College of Liberal Arts & Sciences: World Languages &Literatures. Portland State University. Web. 26 Aug. 2015. https://www.pdx.edu/wll/about-the-swahili-language

"Swahili." Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics. Ed. Keith Brown, et al. 2nd ed. Vol. 12. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005. 304–308. Print.

"Swahili." Language Materials Project. UCLA International Institute, Center for World Languages. Web. 26 Aug. 2015. http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?LangID=17&menu=004/

Thompson, Irene. "Swahili." About World Languages. The Technology Development Group. 7 Aug. 2015. Web. 26 August 2015. http://aboutworldlanguages.com/swahili