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Swahili language

Swahili (called ''Kiswahili'' in the language itself) is the first language of the Swahili people ''(Waswahili),'' who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands.Prins 1961 Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language,L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier Swahili is a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.

Overview

Swahili is a Bantu languages|Bantu language that serves as the native tongue of various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the Southeast African coastline. About 35% of the Swahili vocabulary derives from the Arabic language, resulting from its evolution through centuries of contact between Arabic-speaking traders and many different Bantu-speaking peoples inhabiting Africa's Indian Ocean coast. It also has incorporated Persian language|Persian, German language|German, Portuguese language|Portuguese, Languages of India|Indian, and English language|English words into its vocabulary due to contact with these different groups of people. Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and 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 declared it an official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is spoken by nearly the entire population of the Comoros and by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, Mozambique, Zambia, and Somalia. In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Bantoid/Southern/Narrow Bantu/Central/G. The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic language|Arabic word ''sāhil'' ساحل: ''sawāhil'' سواحل meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' "language" to mean "coastal language"). (The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert")). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the ''Arabic grammar#Nisba|nisba'' (adjectival form) in Arabic (''of the coast'' "sawāhalii" سواحلي), although some state it is for phonetic reasons. One of the earliest known documents in Swahili is an epic poem in the Arabic script titled Utendi wa Tambuka ("The History of Tambuka"); it is dated 1728. The Latin alphabet has since become standard under the influence of European colonial powers. Methali (''e.g.''), ''i.e.'' “wordplay, risqué or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegory”.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, MI: Pluto Pres 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 Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a Prefix (linguistics)|prefix attached to nouns of the grammatical gender|noun class that includes languages (see #Noun classes|Noun classes below). '''Kiswahili''' refers to the 'Swahili Language'; '''Waswahili''' refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and '''Uswahili''' refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns.

Sounds

Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of Tone (linguistics)|lexical tone (with the exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).

Vowels

Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . The pronunciation of the phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet u and o (as found in Italian, for example). Vowels are never vowel reduction|reduced, regardless of stress (linguistics)|stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:
- is pronounced like the "a" in ''father''
- is pronounced like the "e" in ''bed''
- is pronounced like the "i" in ''ski''
- is pronounced like the "o" in American English ''horse'', or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
- is pronounced between the "u" in ''rude'' and the "o" in ''wrote''. Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", ''chui'', is pronounced , with hiatus (linguistics)|hiatus.

Consonants

- 'They are ''being'' hit'

Swahili time

(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as ''asubuhi'' 'morning', ''jioni'' 'evening' and ''usiku'' 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
- ''saa moja asubuhi'' ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
- ''saa tisa usiku'' ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
- ''saa mbili usiku'' ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m. More specific time demarcations include ''adhuhuri'' 'early afternoon', ''alasiri'' 'late afternoon', ''usiku wa manane'' 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' ''macheo'' and sunset ''machweo''. At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either ''saa moja jioni'' or ''saa moja usiku''. Other relevant phrases include ''na robo'' 'and a quarter', ''na nusu'' 'and a half', ''kasarobo/kasorobo'' 'less a quarter', and ''dakika'' 'minute(s)':
- ''saa nne na nusu'' ('hour four and a half') 10:30
- ''saa tatu na dakika tano'' ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
- ''saa mbili kasorobo'' ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
- ''saa tatu kasoro'' ('a few minutes to nine') Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the areas where Swahili speakers live.

Dialects of Swahili and languages closely related to Swahili

This list is based on Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.

Dialects of Swahili

Modern standard Swahili is based on ''Kiunguja,'' the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town. There are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, including the following. H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
- ''Kiunguja'': spoken in Stone Town|Zanzibar City and environs on Zanzibar|Unguja (Zanzibar) Island. Other dialects occupy the bulk of the island.
- ''Kitumbatu'' and ''Kimakunduchi'': the countryside dialects of the island of Zanzibar. Kimakunduchi is a recent renaming of "Kihadimu"; the old name means "serf", hence it is considered pejorative.
- ''Kimrima'': spoken around Pangani, Vanga, Dar es Salaam, Rufiji District|Rufiji and Mafia Island.
- ''Kimgao'': formerly spoken around Kilwa (district)|Kilwa and to the south.
- ''Kipemba'': local dialect of the island of Pemba, Tanzania|Pemba.
- ''Kimvita'': the major dialect of Mombasa (also known as "Mvita", which means "war", in reference to the many wars which were fought over it), the other major dialect alongside Kiunguja.
- ''Kingare'': subdialect of the Mombasa area.
- ''Chijomvu'': subdialect of the Mombasa area.
- ''Chi-Chifundi'': dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
- ''Kivumba'': dialect of the southern Kenya coast.
- ''Kiamu'': spoken in and around the island of Lamu (Amu).
- ''Sheng language|Sheng'': a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and ethnic languages spoken in and around Nairobi in informal settings. Sheng originated in the Nairobi slums and is considered fashionable and cosmopolitan among a growing segment of the population.

Languages similar to Swahili

- ''Kimwani:'' spoken in the Kerimba Islands and northern coastal Mozambique.
- ''Kingwana:'' spoken in the eastern and southern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sometimes called ''Copperbelt Swahili,'' especially the variety spoken in the south.
- ''Comorian language'' (''Shikomor''), the language of the Comoros Islands, which form a chain between Tanzania and the northern tip of Madagascar.
- ''Chimwiini'' was traditionally spoken around the Somali town of Barawa. In recent years, most of its speakers have fled to Kenya to escape civil war. Whether Chimwiini is Swahili or a distinct language is a question that provokes division within each of the following groups: linguists specializing in Swahili, Chimwiini speakers, and speakers of other Swahili dialects.
- ''Kizigua'' is traditionally spoken in the lower Juba province in Somalia near Kismayo city by the descendents of Bantus who were forced there by 19th century slavery.

The rise of Swahili to regional prominence

There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state exactly when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili culture emerged. Nevertheless, it is assumed that the Swahili speaking people have occupied their present territories, hugging the Indian Ocean, since well before AD 1000. Arab and Persian people|Persian traders are known to have had extensive contact with the coastal peoples from at least the 6th Century of the Christian Era, and Islam began to spread along the East African Coast from at least the 9th Century. People from Oman and the Persian Gulf settled the Zanzibar Archipelago, helping spread both Islam and the Swahili language and culture with major trading and cultural centers as far as Sofala (Mozambique) and Kilwa (Tanzania) to the south, and Mombasa and Lamu in Kenya, Barawa, Merca, Kismayu and Mogadishu (Somalia) in the north, the Comoros Islands and northern Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Starting about 1800, the rulers of Zanzibar organized trading expeditions into the interior of the mainland, up to the various lakes in the continent's Great Rift Valley. They soon established permanent trade routes and Swahili speaking merchants settled in stops along the new trade routes. For the most part, this process did not lead to genuine colonization. But colonisation did occur west of Lake Malawi, in what is now Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, giving rise to a highly divergent dialect. After Germany seized the region known as Tanganyika (present day mainland Tanzania) for a colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide (but shallow) dissemination 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 United Kingdom|British and German people|Germans both were keen to facilitate their rule over colonies with dozens of languages spoken by selecting a single local language that hopefully would be well accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only good candidate in these 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 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 language|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 interterritorial conference was held at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili.Whiteley 1969: 80 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 situation

At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili.Brock-Utne 2001: 123 Kenya's population is comparable, but the prevalence of Swahili is lower, though still widespread. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one. The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (to be subdivided in 2009) are Swahili speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese speak it; http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=134530&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/ and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most important national language of that country. In Uganda, the Baganda generally don't speak Swahili, but it is in common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country, and is currently being implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being common only in market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so, Swahili possibly exceeds Hausa language|Hausa of West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers, and Swahili speakers may number some ten to fifteen percent of the 750 million people of sub-Saharan Africa (2005 World Bank Data).http://devdata.worldbank.org/external/CPProfile.asp?PTYPE=CP&CCODE=SSA Many of the world's institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence. It is one of the languages that feature in world radio stations such as The BBC, the Voice of America (USA), Radio Deutsche Welle (Germany), Radio Moscow International (Russia), Radio China International, Radio Sudan, and Radio South Africa.

In non-African popular culture

- Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. "Simba", the main character's name, means lion (this is related to the Sanskrit word ''simha'' for "lion"), "Rafiki" means friend, and the name of the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "There are no worries". In The Lion King II: Simba's Pride Scar's adopted son is called "Kovu", Swahili for "scar". Most of the characters of the movies have names that are Swahili words. However, in Lion King II song "Upendi", it is incorrectly portrayed as meaning "love" ("Upendo" in Swahili). "Upendi" sounds closer to "Hupendi" ("you do not love") in Kiswahili than to "Upendo" (love).
- In Sid Meier's Civilization IV, a well known turn-based strategy computer game, the menu theme music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father").
- In Michael Jackson's 1987 single "Liberian Girl" the repeated intro is the Swahili phrase "Nakupenda pia, nakutaka pia, mpenzi wee!" which translates "I love you too, and I want you too, you my love!"
- Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).
- Gene Roddenberry took the name of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek from the Swahili word uhuru meaning "freedom".
- The Brooklyn-based Afro-beat band The Daktaris took their name from the Swahili word for "doctor", as did the 1960s US television show Daktari.
- Hatari!|Hatari, the Swahili word for "danger," is the name of a 1962 American movie.
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series)|Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the first watchers spoke Swahili. (season 7)
- In The Simpsons Smithers speaks Swahili. Marge also lies on her resume saying that she speaks it.
- The subsidiary company of eBay kijiji meaning village.
- The Content Management System (CMS) Mambo means "issues" or "what's up" greeting.
- The Content Management System (CMS) Joomla means total. The right spelling would have been Jumla but the pronunciation remains the same.
- The game 'Jenga' (a test of physical dexterity involving the deconstruction of a tower of finely balanced wooden blocks) is derived from the Swahili word 'kujenga', the Swahili verb "to build"; Jenga! "Build!", being the imperative form of the verb.
- Weird Al refers to Swahili in his song "Virus Alert!", singing that the virus "will translate your documents into Swahili."
- The independent Gainesville, Fl based band The Umoja Orchestra take their name from the Swahili word for "unity."
- In James L. Conway's SF film Hangar 18 the automatic speech system on the alien spaceship is a simple reading of Swahili phrasebook processed with some vocoder.

Notes

References

- Ashton, E. O. ''Swahili Grammar: Including intonation.'' Longman House. Essex 1947. ISBN 0-582-62701-X.
- Brock-Utne, Birgit. 2001. Education for all in whose language? ''Oxford review of education'', 27(1): 115-134.
- Chiraghdin, Shihabuddin and Mathias Mnyampala. ''Historia ya Kiswahili''. Oxford University Press. Eastern Africa. 1977. ISBN 0-19-572367-8
- Contini-Morava, Ellen. ''Noun Classification in Swahili''. 1994.
- Lambert, H.E. 1956. ''Chi-Chifundi: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast''. (Kampala)
- Lambert, H.E. 1957. ''Ki-Vumba: A Dialect of the Southern Kenya Coast''. (Kampala)
- Lambert, H.E. 1958. ''Chi-Jomvu and ki-Ngare: Subdialects of the Mombasa Area''. (Kampala)
- Marshad, Hassan A. ''Kiswahili au Kiingereza (Nchini Kenya)''. Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Nairobi 1993. ISBN 9966-22-098-4.
- Nurse, Derek, and Hinnebusch, Thomas J. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 1993. Series: University of California Publications in Linguistics, v. 121.
- Prins, A.H.J. 1961. The Swahili-Speaking Peoples of Zanzibar and the East African Coast (Arabs, Shirazi and Swahili). Ethnographic Survey of Africa, edited by Daryll Forde. London: International African Institute.
- Prins, A.H.J. 1970. A Swahili Nautical Dictionary. Preliminary Studies in Swahili Lexicon - 1. Dar es Salaam.
- Whiteley, Wilfred. 1969. Swahili: the rise of a national language. London: Methuen. Series: Studies in African History.