The Swahili language or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia. Although only five million people speak Swahili as their mother tongue, it is used as a lingua franca in much of East Africa, meaning the total number of speakers exceeds 60 million. Swahili serves as a national, or official language, of five nations: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, the Comoros and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Some Swahili vocabulary is derived from Arabic through more than twelve centuries of contact with Arabic-speaking inhabitants of the coast of southeastern Africa. It has also incorporated Persian, German, Portuguese, English, and French words into its vocabulary through contact during the past five centuries.
Read more about Swahili Language: Name, Phonology, Orthography, Noun Classes, Verb Affixation, Concord
Other articles related to "swahili language, swahili":
... Swahili phrases agree with nouns in a system of concord, though if the noun refers to a human, they accord with noun classes 2 ... regardless of noun class ... In Standard Swahili (Kiswahili sanifu) which was based on the dialect spoken in Zanzibar the system is rather complex however, it is drastically simplified in many local variants where Swahili is ... In places where Standard Swahili is not commonly used, concord reflects only animacy ...
... Bongo flava is Tanzanian hip hop, with fast rhythms and rhymes in Swahili ... The name “Bongo Flava” comes from the Swahili word for brains ubongo ... elements of American rap, R B, hip hop, with its unique Swahili twist ...
... Nyaigotti-Chacha (born 1952) born in Kuria District, Nyanza Province is a Kenyan playwright and Swahili language educationalist, the executive secretary of the Inter-University Council for ... educated at Kenyatta College (S1) and BEd (Swahili Language) and later studied at Yale University, gaining a PhD in Swahili Language Linguistics ... He has been a Tutorial Fellow and Lecturer in Swahili Language and Linguistics at Kenyatta University and later Egerton University in Kenya ...
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“There’s a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)