What are places in the world speak Swahili?
Here is the list of countries that speak Kiswahili:
- Tanzania
- Burundi
- Congo (Kinshasa)
- Kenya
- Mayotte
- Mozambique
- Oman
- Rwanda
- Somalia
- South Africa
What African countries speak Swahili?
Africa’s Swahili-speaking zone now extends across a full third of the continent ... Tanzania became one of only two African nations ever to declare a native African language as the country’s official mode of communication (the other is Ethiopia ...
Where in the world do people speak Swahili?
Who Are The Swahili People?
- History of the Swahili People. The Swahili people were traditionally found living in the coastal areas of East Africa. ...
- Swahili Homelands. ...
- The Swahili Language. ...
- Traditional Ways of Life. ...
- Notable Swahili Individuals. ...
- Ongoing Threats to the Swahili Culture. ...
What country speaks Swahili language?
- Ethiopia
- Morocco
- Algeria
- Rwanda
- Kenya
- Egypt
- Ghana
- Angola
- South Africa
- Nigeria
How many people still speak Swahili?
There are about 16 million people throughout the world who speak a dialect of Swahili as a native language. As a second language, it has about 82 million speakers. The language is considered to be the lingua franca of the African Great Lakes region and other parts of eastern and southeastern Africa.
What percentage of the world population speaks Swahili?
Swahili is the official language in Tanzania and is spoken in 3 more countries as monther tongue by a part of the population. With a share of around 9%, it is most widespread in Tanzania....Swahili speaking countries.CountryTanzaniaRegionEastern AfricaOfficial languageyesDistribution8.8 %Total5,412,0003 more columns
What country speaks the most Swahili?
TanzaniaIn fact, Tanzania is the country with the highest percentage of Swahili speakers. This is why it often the first answer to the question "What countries speak Swahili?" Tanzanians often speak Swahili when trading with merchants from Kenya, Uganda, and other East African nations.
Who speaks Swahili in the world?
Swahili languageSwahiliNative tomainly in Tanzania and Kenya, Comoros, Mayotte, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Bajuni Islands (part of Somalia), northern Mozambique (mostly Mwani), Zambia, Malawi, and Madagascar.EthnicitySwahili19 more rows
Why is Swahili so popular?
During the decades leading up to the independence of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in the early 1960s, Swahili functioned as an international means of political collaboration. It enabled freedom fighters throughout the region to communicate their common aspirations even though their native languages varied widely.
How popular is Swahili language?
Swahili is “among the 10 most widely spoken languages in the world, with more than 200 million speakers,” UNESCO states in its proposal to Member States last month to proclaim World Kiswahili Language Day.
Is Swahili worth learning?
Its usefulness for research and travel is one of the most cited reasons given for studying Swahili. Many schools offer Swahili as an elective, and IT infrastructure is growing which will enhance economic and research opportunities.
How old is Swahili?
Around 3,000 years ago, speakers of the proto-Bantu language group began a millennia-long series of migrations; the Swahili people originate from Bantu inhabitants of the coast of Southeast Africa, in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique.
How many words are in Swahili?
The vocabulary contains 1815 meaning-word pairs ("entries") corresponding to core LWT meanings from the recipient language Swahili. The corresponding text chapter was published in the book Loanwords in the World's Languages. The language page Swahili contains a list of all loanwords arranged by donor languoid.
Is Swahili easy?
Swahili is said to be the easiest African language for an English speaker to learn. It's one of the few sub-Saharan African languages that have no lexical tone, just like in English. It's also much easier to read as you read out Swahili words just the way they are written.
How long does it take to learn Swahili?
900 hoursThe FSI has over 800 language learning courses in more than 70 languages with more than 70 years of experience in training US diplomats and foreign affairs employees....Tier 3: Languages that may have cultural and linguistic differences compared to English.Indonesian900 hours or 36 weeksSwahili900 hours or 36 weeks1 more row•Apr 18, 2018
What African language is mostly?
SwahiliThe most widely spoken languages of Africa, Swahili (200 million), Yoruba (45 million), Igbo (30 million), and Fula (35 million) all belong to the Niger-Congo family.
What percentage of Kenyans speak Swahili?
Since the language taught at schools, however, in its Standard Zanzibar accent, nearly 100% of the population of Kenya can speak Swahili. There are 7 Swahili dialects.
Is Swahili the most spoken language in Africa?
SWAHILI. The most spoken language in Africa is Swahili which is said to have between 100 and 150 million speakers. Known as a 'Bantu' language, Swahili apparently originated from other languages like Arabic.
Is Swahili taught in USA?
In addition to St. Lawrence University, Swahili is taught in over a hundred institutions in the US alone. Among these are Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton and many other well-known colleges and universities.
Is Swahili worth learning?
Its usefulness for research and travel is one of the most cited reasons given for studying Swahili. Many schools offer Swahili as an elective, and IT infrastructure is growing which will enhance economic and research opportunities.
How many people speak Swahili?
Various estimates have been put forward, which vary widely, ranging from 50 million to 100 million. Swahili serves as a national language of the DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.
What is the Swahili language?
Swahili, also known by its native name Kiswahili, is a Bantu language and the native language of the Swahili people. It is a lingua franca of the African Great Lakes region and other parts of East and Southern Africa, including Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, some parts of Malawi, Somalia, Zambia, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Comorian, spoken in the Comoros Islands, is sometimes considered a dialect of Swahili, although other authorities consider it a distinct language. Sixteen to twenty percent of Swahili vocabulary is Arabic loanwords, including the word swahili, from Arabic sawāḥilī ( سَوَاحِلي, a plural adjectival form of an Arabic word meaning 'of the coast'). The Arabic loanwords date from the contacts of Arabian traders with the Bantu inhabitants of the east coast of Africa over many centuries. Under Arab trade influence, Swahili emerged as a lingua franca used by Arab traders and Bantu peoples of the East African Coast.
What language is used to make Swahili loanwords?
Omani Arabic is the source of most Arabic loanwords in Swahili. In the text "Early Swahili History Reconsidered", however, Thomas Spear noted that Swahili retains a large amount of grammar, vocabulary, and sounds inherited from the Sabaki language. In fact, while taking account of daily vocabulary, using lists of one hundred words, ...
What is the difference between Swahili and Sabaki?
Classification. Swahili is a Bantu language of the Sabaki branch. In Guthrie's geographic classification, Swahili is in Bantu zone G, whereas the other Sabaki languages are in zone E70, commonly under the name Nyika.
How did Swahili influence Islam?
Swahili played a major role in spreading both Christianity and Islam in East Africa. From their arrival in East Africa, Arabs brought Islam and set up madrasas, where they used Swahili to teach Islam to the natives. As the Arab presence grew, more and more natives were converted to Islam and were taught using the Swahili language .
Why did the Tanganyika African National Union use Swahili as their national language?
During the struggle for Tanganyika independence, the Tanganyika African National Union used Swahili as language of mass organisation and political movement. This included publishing pamphlets and radio broadcasts to rally the people to fight for independence. After independence, Swahili was adopted as the national language of the nation. Till this day, Tanzanians carry a sense of pride when it comes to Swahili especially when it is used to unite over 120 tribes across Tanzania. Swahili was used to strengthen solidarity among the people and a sense of togetherness and for that Swahili remains a key identity of the Tanzanian people.
What is the national language of the DRC?
Swahili serves as a national language of the DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Shikomor, an official language in Comoros and also spoken in Mayotte ( Shimaore ), is closely related to Swahili. Swahili is also one of the working languages of the African Union and of the Southern African Development Community.
How many people speak Swahili?
It is widely debated how many people in the world speak Swahili, but most estimates say between 100 and 150 million. The Swahili language is spoken in several African countries. The major Swahili speaking countries are Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, ...
What countries speak Swahili?
The major Swahili speaking countries are Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, The Democratic Republic of Congo and the Comoros Islands. Small communities equally exist in Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, Rwanda, Burundi and Somalia. Historically, Swahili has been a lingua franca in East Africa, or a language used as a way of communicating across different ...
What Will The Future Hold For Swahili In Africa?
There’s no doubt that the propagation of Swahili caused quite a stir in local communities. One could argue that it was a kind of early globalism .
What is the national language of Tanzania?
Swahili is the national language of Tanzania, but despite this fact, only about 10% of the population speak Swahili as their mother tongue, whereas 90% speak it as a second language. In other Swahili-spe aking countries the difference is even bigger.
Where did Swahili originate?
For a lot of East African countries, Swahili has become this lingua franca. The Swahili language originally developed from the Pokomo Bantu language of Kenya and it developed into a trade language used throughout the region.
Where is Swahili spoken?
Historically, Swahili has been a lingua franca in East Africa, or a language used as a way of communicating across different nationalities and tribal groups who speak different languages as their mother tongue.
Where did the word "swahili" come from?
Even the name of the language “Swahili” comes from the Arabic “سَوَاحِل “ (sawāḥil) which is the plural form of the word for “coast”, referring to the people living on the coast. It is, in large part, because of this relationship with the Arabic language, as well as the Muslim religion, that Swahili had become so wide-spread.
What ethnicity is Swahili?
Related ethnic groups. Mijikenda, Pokomo, Comorians, Bajunis, Shirazi and Barawani. The Swahili people (or Waswahili) are a Bantu ethnic group inhabiting East Africa. Members of this ethnicity primarily reside on the Swahili coast, in an area encompassing the Zanzibar archipelago, littoral Kenya, the Tanzania seaboard, northern Mozambique, ...
Where did the Swahili people come from?
The Swahili people originate from Bantu inhabitants of the coast of Southeast Africa, in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. These Bantu-speaking agriculturalists settled the coast at the outset of the first millennium. Archaeological finds at Fukuchani, on the north-west coast of Zanzibar, indicate a settled agricultural and fishing community from the 6th century CE at the latest. The considerable amount of daub found indicates timber buildings, and shell beads, bead grinders, and iron slag have been found at the site. There is evidence for limited engagement in long-distance trade: a small amount of imported pottery has been found, less than 1% of total pottery finds, mostly from the Gulf and dated to the 5th to 8th century. The similarity to contemporary sites such as Mkokotoni and Dar es Salaam indicate a unified group of communities that developed into the first center of coastal maritime culture. The coastal towns appear to have been engaged in Indian Ocean trade at this early period, and trade rapidly increased in importance and quantity between the mid-8th and the 11th century.
What religion do Swahili people follow?
The Swahili people follow the Sunni denomination of Islam. Large numbers of Swahili undertake the Hajj and Umrah from Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique. Traditional Islamic dress such as the jilbab and thob are also popular among the Swahili.
Why are Swahili so powerful?
Although most Swahili live with living standards far below that of upper hierarchy of the wealthiest nations, the Swahili are generally considered a relatively economically powerful group due to their history of trade.
What is the origin of Kilwa?
Previously thought by many scholars to be essentially of Arabic or Persian style and origin, archaeological, written, linguistic, and cultural evidence instead suggests a predominantly African genesis and sustainment. This would be accompanied later by an enduring Arabic and Islamic influence in the form of trade and an exchange of ideas. Upon visiting Kilwa in 1331, the great Berber explorer Ibn Battuta was impressed by the substantial beauty that he encountered there. He describes its inhabitants as "Zanj, jet-black in colour, and with tattoo marks on their faces", and notes that "Kilwa is a very fine and substantially built town, and all its buildings are of wood" (his description of Mombasa was essentially the same). Kimaryo points out that the distinctive tattoo marks are common among the Makonde. Architecture included arches, courtyards, isolated women's quarters, the mihrab, towers, and decorative elements on the buildings themselves. Many ruins may still be observed near the southern Kenyan port of Malindi in the Gede ruins ( the lost city of Gede/Gedi ).
What was the language of East Africa?
Kiswahili served as coastal East Africa's lingua franca and trade language from the ninth century onward. Zanzibari traders' intensive push into the African interior from the late eighteenth century induced the adoption of Swahili as a common language throughout much of East Africa.
Where did the Swahili language originate?
With its original speech community centered on Zanzibar and the coastal parts of Kenya and Tanzania, a seaboard referred to as the Swahili Coast, Swahili became the tongue of the urban class in the African Great Lakes region, and eventually went on to serve as a lingua franca during the post-colonial period.
What is Swahili language?
Swahili is predominantly a mix of local Bantu languages and Arabic. Decades of intensive trade along the East African coast resulted in this mix of cultures. Besides Arabic and Bantu, Swahili also has English, Persian, Portuguese, German and French influences due to trade contact.
Where does Swahili come from?
It has roots in Arabic. Around 35% of the Swahili vocabulary comes from Arabic, but Swahili has also quite literally adopted words from English, such as: polisi – police, televisheni – television, redio – radio, and baiskeli – bicycle.
What is the meaning of the word "sahil"?
Sawahili is the plural for the Arabic word sahil, which means ‘coast’ . Ki- at the beginning means coastal language. This is because Swahili arose as a trade language along the coastline, and is also best spoken along the coast. In 1928, the Zanzibar dialect called Kiunguja was chosen as the standard Swahili.
How many people speak Swahili?
11 Fascinating Facts About the Swahili Language. With an estimated 50 to 100 million Swahili speakers worldwide, it’s time to broaden the scope – there’s more to it than H akuna Matata – and dive deeper into this relatively unknown East African language. Here are 11 interesting facts on Swahili.
What is the official language of Tanzania?
Swahili is the lingua franca (a common language adopted between two non-native speakers) of the East African Union and is the official language of Tanzania (official language), Kenya (official language next to English) and of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
What is the name of the people whose mother tongue is Swahili?
People whose mother tongue is Swahili, about five to 15 million worldwide, are often referred to as Waswahili.
Where is the Swahili language written?
The earliest known documents of the Swahili language are letters written in Arabic script, written in 1711 in the region of Kilwa, present-day Tanzania. They are now preserved in the Historical Archives of Goa, India. Add to Plan.
How do you count in Swahili?
If you look at the poster above, then you’ll see some numbers listed and, in fact, you can find the rest of them – or at least many of them – in the uTalk app.
How do I start learning Swahili?
There are plenty of places where you can get started learning Swahili, as it is very widely spoken and isn’t all that difficult to start learning. Of course, one way to learn Swahili is by using our app, where you’ll learn to speak and understand around 2,500 words and phrases by playing games and having fun.
Overview
Grammar
Swahili nouns are separable into classes, which are roughly analogous to genders in other languages. In Swahili, prefixes mark groups of similar objects: ⟨m-⟩ marks single human beings (mtoto 'child'), ⟨wa-⟩ marks multiple humans (watoto 'children'), ⟨u-⟩ marks abstract nouns (utoto 'childhood'), and so on. And just as adjectives and pronouns must agree with the gender of nouns in some languages with grammatical gender, so in Swahili adjectives, pronouns and even verbs …
Classification
Swahili is a Bantu language of the Sabaki branch. In Guthrie's geographic classification, Swahili is in Bantu zone G, whereas the other Sabaki languages are in zone E70, commonly under the name Nyika. Historical linguists do not consider the Arabic influence on Swahili to be significant, since Arabic influence is limited to lexical items, most of which have been borrowed only since 1500, whereas the grammatical and syntactic structure of the language is typically Bantu.
History
The origin of the word Swahili is its phonetic equivalent in Arabic:
The core of the Swahili language originates in Bantu languages of the coast of East Africa. Much of Swahili's Bantu vocabulary has cognates in the Pokomo, Taita, and Mijikenda languages and, to a lesser extent, other East African Bantu languages. While opinions vary on the specifics, it has been historically purpor…
Current status
Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in four African Great Lakes countries (Kenya, DRC, Uganda, and Tanzania), where it is an official or national language, while being the first language for many people in Tanzania especially in the coastal regions of Tanga, Pwani, Dar es Salaam, Mtwara and Lindi. In the inner regions of Tanzania, Swahili is spoken with an accent influenced by local languages and dialects, and as a first language for most people bo…
Religious and political identity
Swahili played a major role in spreading both Christianity and Islam in East Africa. From their arrival in East Africa, Arabs brought Islam and set up madrasas, where they used Swahili to teach Islam to the natives. As the Arab presence grew, more and more natives were converted to Islam and were taught using the Swahili language.
From the arrival of Europeans in East Africa, Christianity was introduced in East Africa. While the …
Phonology
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: /ɑ/, /ɛ/, /i/, /ɔ/, and /u/. According to Ellen Contini-Morava, vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. However, according to Edgar Polomé, these five phonemes can vary in pronunciation. Polomé claims that /ɛ/, /i/, /ɔ/, and /u/ are pronounced as such only in stressed syllables. In unstressed syllables, as well as before a prenasalized consonant, they are pronounced as [e], [ɪ], [o], and [ʊ]. E is also commonly pronoun…
Orthography
Swahili is now written in the Latin alphabet. There are a few digraphs for native sounds, ch, sh, ng and ny; q and x are not used, c is not used apart from the digraph ch, unassimilated English loans and, occasionally, as a substitute for k in advertisements. There are also several digraphs for Arabic sounds, which many speakers outside of ethnic Swahili areas have trouble differentiating.
Overview
The Swahili people (Swahili: WaSwahili) comprise mainly Bantu, Afro-Arab and Comorian ethnic groups inhabiting the Swahili coast, an area encompassing the Zanzibar archipelago and mainland Tanzania's seaboard, littoral Kenya, northern Mozambique, the Comoros Islands, southwestern Somalia and Northwest Madagascar. The original Swahili distinguished themselves from other Bantu peoples by self-identifying as Waungwana (the civilised ones). In certain regions (e.g. La…
Definition
The Swahili people originate from Bantu inhabitants of the coast of Southeast Africa, in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. These Bantu-speaking agriculturalists settled the coast at the outset of the first millennium. Archaeological finds at Fukuchani, on the north-west coast of Zanzibar, indicate a settled agricultural and fishing community from the 6th century CE at the latest. The considerable amount of daub found indicates timber buildings, and shell beads, bead grinders, a…
Religion
Islam established its presence on the Southeast African coast from around the 9th century, when Bantu traders settling on the coast tapped into the Indian Ocean trade networks. The Swahili people follow the Sunni denomination of Islam.
Large numbers of Swahili undertake the Hajj and Umrah from Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique. Traditional Islamic dress such as the jilbab and thob are also popular among the Swahili. The Swa…
Language
The Swahili speak as their native tongue the Swahili language, which is a member of the Bantu subgroup of the Niger-Congo family. Its closest relatives include Comorian spoken on the Comoros Islands, and the Mijikenda language of the Mijikenda people in Kenya.
With its original speech community centred on Zanzibar and the coastal parts of
Economy
For centuries the Swahili depended greatly on trade from the Indian Ocean. The Swahili have played a vital role as middle man between southeast, central and South Africa, and the outside world. Trade contacts have been noted as early as 100 CE by early Roman writers who visited the Southeast African coast in the 1st century. Trade routes extended from Kenya to Tanzania into modern day Congo, along which goods were brought to the coasts and were sold to Arab, Indian…
Architecture
Thought by many early scholars to be essentially of Arabic or Persian style and origin, some contemporary academics are suggesting that archaeological, written, linguistic, and cultural evidence might suggest an African genesis which would be accompanied only later by an enduring Arabic and Islamic influences in the form of trade and an exchange of ideas. Upon visiting Kilwa in 1331, the great Berber explorer Ibn Battuta was impressed by the substantial bea…
See also
• Swahili language
• Swahililand
• Swahili architecture
• Swahili culture
• Comorian society
External links
• Media related to Swahili people at Wikimedia Commons
• The Story of Africa: The Swahili — BBC World Service
• Swahili Culture
• "Swahili" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.