SWAHILI BREIFING:
Swahili is the second most widely spoken language in Africa. There are several radio stations in the world that have Swahili programs. For example, Voice of America, BBC, Radio Deutschewelle (Germany), Radio Moscow International, and Radio Japan International, Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa. Swahili is very famous in the world today as it is used in songs, movies and television
Swahili is spoken by an estimated 70 million people and, after Arabic, is the most widely understood language in Africa. It is the official language of Tanzania and Kenya and is used extensively in Uganda and the eastern provinces of Zaire. In Burundi and Rwanda, it is known and used in major urban centers, but is not widely known or extensively used in the monolinguistic countryside.
In spite of its large number of speakers and the huge area in which the language is spoken, Swahili has less than two million native speakers, most of whom live along the east African coast of southern Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, northern Mozambique, and on the off shore islands of Lamu, Zanzibar, and Pemba. Most speakers in Tanzania and Kenya acquire Swahili as a second language, being native speakers of other African languages. Many speakers of Swahili, especially those further into the interior of the continent (up country) speak two or more other languages, and use Swahili as a lingua franca. A growing number of first language speakers, however, live in the urban areas of East Africa, where inter-ethnic communities prevail.
The Swahili language is basically of Bantu (African) origin. It has borrowed words from other languages such as Arabic probably as a result of the Swahili people using the Quran written in Arabic for spiritual guidance as Muslims.
As regards the formation of the Swahili culture and language, some scholars attribute these phenomena to the intercourse of African and Asiatic people on the coast of East Africa. The word "Swahili" was used by early Arab visitors to the coast and it means "the coast". Ultimately it came to be applied to the people and the language.
Regarding the history of the Swahili language, the older view linked to the colonial time asserts that the Swahili language originates from Arabs and Persians who moved to the East African coast. Given the fact that only the vocabulary can be associated with these groups but the syntax or grammar of the language is Bantu, this argument has been almost forgotten. It is well known that any language that has to grow and expand its territories ought to absorb some vocabulary from other languages in its way.
A suggestion has been made that Swahili is an old language. The earliest known document recounting the past situation on the East African coast written in the 2nd century AD (in Greek language by anonymous author at Alexandria in Egypt and it is called the Periplus of Erythrean Sea) says that merchants visiting the East African coast at that time from Southern Arabia, used to speak with the natives in their local language and they intermarried with them. Those that suggest that Swahili is an old language point to this early source for the possible antiquity of the Swahili language.
It is an undeniable truth that Arab and Persian cultures had greatest influence on the Swahili culture and the Swahili language. To demonstrate the contribution of each culture into the Swahili language, take an example of the numbers as they are spoken in Swahili. "moja" = one, "mbili" = two, "tatu" = three, "nne" = four, "tano" = five, "nane" = eight, "kumi" = ten,are all of Bantu origin. On the other hand there is "sita" = six, "saba" = seven and "tisa" = nine, that are borrowed from Arabic. The Swahili words, "chai" = tea, "achari" = pickle, "serikali" = government, "diwani" = councillor, "sheha" = village councillor, are some of the words borrowed from Persian bearing testimony to the older connections with Persian merchants. The Swahili language also absorbed words from the Portuguese who controlled the Swahili coastal towns (c. 1500-1700AD). Some of the words that the Swahili language absorbed from the Portuguese include "leso" (handkerchief), "meza" (table), "gereza" (prison), "pesa" ('peso', money), etc. Swahili bull-fighting, still popular on the Pemba island, is also a Portuguese legacy from that period. The Swahili language also borrowed some words from languages of the later colonial powers on the East African coast - English (British) and German. Swahilized English words include "baiskeli" (bicycle), "basi" (bus), "penseli" (pencil), "mashine" (machine), "koti" (coat), etc. The Swahilized German words include "shule" for school and "hela" for a German coin. For centuries, Swahili remained as the language for the people of the East African coast. Long-time interactions with other people bordering the Indian Ocean spread the Swahili language to distant places such as on the islands of Comoro and Madagascar and even far beyond to South Africa, Oman and United Arab Emirates. Trade and migration from the Swahili coast during the nineteenth-century helped spread the language to the interior of particularly Tanzania. It also reached Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Central African Rebublic, and Mozambique.
Christian missionaries learnt Swahili as the language of communication to spread the Gospel in Eastern Africa. So, the missionaries also helped to spread the language. As a matter of fact the first Swahili-English dictionary was prepared by a missionary. During the colonial time, Swahili was used for communication with the local inhabitants. Hence the colonial administrators pioneered the effort of standardizing the Swahili language. Zanzibar was the epicenter of culture and commerce, therefore colonial administrators selected the dialect of the Zanzibar (Unguja) town as the standard Swahili. The Unguja dialect (Kiunguja) was then used for all formal communication such as in schools, in mass media (newspapers and radio), in books and other publications
Now Swahili is spoken in many countries of Eastern Africa. For Tanzania, deliberate efforts were made by the independent nation to promote the language (thanks to the efforts of the former head of state, Julius K. Nyerere). Tanzania's special relations with countries of southern Africa was the chief reason behind the spread of Swahili to Zambia, Malawi, South Africa, and other neighbouring countries to the south. Swahili is the national as well as the official language in Tanzania - almost all Tanzanians speak Swahili proficiently and are unified by it. In Kenya and Uganda, it is the national language, but official correspondence is still conducted in English. The Swahili language is also making its presence in the art world - in songs, theatres, movies and television programs. For example, the lyrics for the song titled "Liberian girl" by Michael Jackson has Swahili phrases: "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi we!" (I love you, and I want you, my dear!). The well-celebrated Disney movie, "The Lion King" features several Swahili words, for example "simba" (lion), "rafiki" (friend), as the names of the characters. The Swahili phrase "hakuna matata" (No troubles or no problems) was also used in that movie. English words borrowed in Swahili are numerous. Words like "baiskeli" (bicycle), "basi" (bus), "penseli" (pencil), "mashine" (machine), "kompyuta" (computer), "koti" (coat), etc. The Germans didn't teach the Africans their language and hence just a few German words are found in Swahili. Words like "shule" for school.The Swahili language is growing very fast in the world today and it is taught seriously in many countries owing to its beauty and simplicity. You can hardly go anywhere in the world today and miss a Swahili speaker.
The promotion of the Swahili language is not only in its use but also deliberate efforts are made throughout the world to include it in education curriculum for higher institutions of learning. It is taught in many parts of the world.
A large number of dialects are distinguished among Swahili speakers and scholars. They are almost without exception all mutually intelligible, differing primarily in certain phonological and lexical features. The dialect of Swahili referred to as Standard Swahili was established in 1930 by the Inter Territorial Language Committee and was based on the coastal dialect of Zanzibar, Kiunguja. The standard language spoken in Tanzania is often referred to as Kisanifu.
Besides Kiunguja, other Swahili linguistic variants (or dialects) are Kimakunduchi (or Kihadimu) and Kitumbatu (both spoken in the rural parts of Zanzibar); Kipemba (Pemba Island); Kimtang'ata (Tanga Town and environs); Kimrima (along the coast of Tanzania, opposite Zanzibar); Kimvita and other related dialects (Mombasa and environs); Kiamu, Kipate and Kisiu, etc. (the Lamu Archipelago); Kitikuu (the Lamu Archipelago and along the coasts of northern Kenya into southern Somalia); Kivumba (Wasini Island and Vanga); Kingwana (Congo and Zaire); and Kingozi, a literary dialect used in classical Swahili poetry.
A Roman-based alphabet has been used for writing Swahili since the mid-nineteenth century. It was adopted and regularized into a standard orthography in the 1930s. Some of the older generations of speakers along the coast and on the coastal islands still use the Arabic-based orthography, but it is not being learned by the young.
Swahili is an agglutinative language, that is, grammatical information is conveyed by attaching prefixes and suffixes to roots and stems. As in other Bantu languages, nouns are divided into sets or classes, referred to as grammatical genders. Each gender has two distinct prefixes, one marking singular nouns, the other plural nouns. There are numerous classes far exceeding the masculine, feminine and neuter classifications of familiar European languages and each class is roughly associated with certain semantic characteristics; for instance, there are classes for human beings, animals, plants, artifacts, long objects, abstract concepts, and so on.Verbs are complex; a system of affixes, mark various grammatical relations, such as subject, object, tense, aspect, and mood. A typical affirmative complex verb form consists of a subject prefix, tense/aspect marker, optional relative pronoun, optional object marker, verb root, and several optional suffixes (called verbal extensions) that define argument roles such as causative, passive, stative, and reciprocal, plus a final vowel to signal the indicative mood. There is a system of concordial agreement in which subject nouns, object nouns optionally, and other sentence constituents must agree with the verb of the sentence in class and number. Adjectives, possessive pronouns and demonstratives also agree in class and number with the noun they modify. The phonology of Swahili is characterized by a simple vowel inventory and consonant inventory. Somewhat unusual sounds are the implosives, sounds that are made by drawing air into the lungs rather than expressing it. Unlike other Bantu languages, it is not a tone language; stress is typically on the penultimate syllable.
Although English is still an important language in post independence East Africa, Swahili plays an increasingly vital role in the daily commercial, political, cultural, and social life of the region at every level of society. This is especially true in Tanzania, where the language is used throughout the country in government offices, the courts, schools and mass media. It has, in fact, become a more important language than English and, in some cases, is replacing English as the language of choice among the educated. In Kenya, this is less the case, and English still enjoys virtual equal status with Swahili. In Uganda the popularity of Swahili as a national or official language often reflects the attitude of the political faction that is currently in control. Swahili has never enjoyed high status among the major Christian oriented Bantu ethnolinguistic groups of southern and western Uganda, but was an important lingua franca in the northern areas of the country and has always been an important language among the military and police. For a period shortly after the Tanzanian Ugandan conflict the status of Swahili received a boost because people observed how effectively it functioned as the language of their liberators, the Tanzanians. In eastern Zaire it remains an important lingua franca and is spoken by growing numbers of native speakers in parts of the region.
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