Swahili Kiswahili
Spoken in:	Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo (DRC), Somalia, Comoros Islands, Mozambique,(including Mayotte)
Total speakers:	First language: 5-10 million Second language: 80 million[1]
Language family:	Niger-Congo  Atlantic-Congo   Volta-Congo    Benue-Congo     Bantoid      Southern       Narrow Bantu        Central         G          Swahili
Official status
Official language of:	Kenya Tanzania Uganda African Union (AU)
Regulated by:	Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa (Tanzania)
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	sw
ISO 639-2:	swa
ISO 639-3:	variously: swa — Swahili (generic) swc — Congo Swahili swh — Swahili (specific)
Areas where Swahili speakers are found.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Swahili (also called Kiswahili; see below for derivation) is a Bantu language. It is the most widely spoken language of sub-Saharan Africa. Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language^[1], Swahili is somewhat of a Southeast African lingua franca, being spoken by around 80 million speakers. The Swahili are a people and culture found on the coast of East Africa, mainly the coastal regions and the islands of Kenya and Tanzania, and north Mozambique. ... The Union of Comoros (until 2002 the Islamic Federal Republic of the Comoros) is an independent country at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean, between northern Madagascar and northern Mozambique. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... Map showing the distribution of Niger-Congo languages The Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the worlds major language families, and Africas largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... In the classification of African languages, Volta-Congo is the major branch (in terms of number of languages) of the Niger-Congo phylum. ... The Benue-Congo group of languages constitutes the largest branch of the Niger-Congo language family, both in terms of sheer number of languages, of which 938 are known (not counting mere dialects), and in terms of speakers, numbering perhaps 550 million. ... In the classification of African languages, Bantoid is a branch of the Benue-Congo subfamily of the Niger-Congo phylum. ... In the classification of African languages, Southern Bantoid (or South Bantoid) is one of the two branches of the Bantoid subfamily of the Niger-Congo phylum. ... In the classification of African languages, Narrow Bantu is a term commonly used to designate the branch of Niger-Congo containing the numerous Bantu languages as recognized by Guthrie (1948) in his seminal classification of the Bantu languages. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Kenya. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Tanzania. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Uganda. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_the_African_Union. ... Anthem Let Us All Unite and Celebrate Together [1] Administrative Centre Largest city Cairo, Egypt Working languages Arabic English French Portuguese Spanish(Eq. ... Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa (National Swahili-Council, abbreviated as BAKITA) is a Tanzanian institution responsible with regulating the Swahili language. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Image File history File links Areas where swahili is spoken. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Bantu is a language family that belongs to the Niger-Congo group. ... Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ...

Swahili is the mother tongue of the Swahili people (or Waswahili) who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastlines from southern Somalia as far south as Mozambique's border region with Tanzania.^[2] Swahili has become a lingua franca in much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and is now the only African language among the official working languages of the African Union. Swahili is also taught in the major universities in the world, and several international media outlets, such as the BBC, Voice of America and Xinhua have Swahili programs. First language (native language, mother tongue, or vernacular) is the language a person learns first. ... The Swahili are a people and culture found on the coast of East Africa, mainly the coastal regions and the islands of Kenya and Tanzania, and north Mozambique. ... Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ... Anthem Let Us All Unite and Celebrate Together [1] Administrative Centre Largest city Cairo, Egypt Working languages Arabic English French Portuguese Spanish(Eq. ... The British Broadcasting Corporation, which is usually known as the BBC, is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the United Kingdom alone and with a budget of more than GB£4 billion. ... Voice of America logo Voice of America (VOA), is the official external radio and television broadcasting service of the United States federal government. ... Xinhua (Chinese:新华通讯社/新華通訊社, pinyin:xīnhuá tōngxùnshè) is also the short for Xinhua News Agency Xinhua (Chinese:新化县/新化縣, pinyin:xīnhuà xiàn) is a county in Hunan,China, See Xinhua...

Overview

Swahili, spoken natively by various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the East African coastline, has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DCR), 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. Swahili, or other closely related languages, is also used by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, Rwanda, Mozambique, Somalia, and Zambia, and nearly the entire population of the Comoros.

In the Guthrie nongenetic classification of Bantu languages, Swahili is included under Bantoid/Southern/Narrow Bantu/Central/G.

The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sahel ساحل: sawahil 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 nisba in Arabic (of the coast سواحلي), although some state it is for phonetic reasons. Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... Arabic is a Semitic language. ...

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.^[3] In mathematics, see epic morphism. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing the Arabic language, which is the language of the Quran, the holy book of Islam. ... Utend̠i wa Tambuka or Utenzi wa Tambuka[1] (The Story of Tambuka), also known as Kyuo kya Hereḳali (the book of Heraclius), is an epic poem in the Swahili language dated 1728. ... Events Astronomical aberration discovered by the astronomer James Bradley Swedish academy of sciences founded at Uppsala The founding of the University of Havana (Universidad de la Habana), Cubas most well-established university. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

Although originally written in Arabic script, Swahili orthography is now based on the Latin alphabet that was introduced by Christian missionaries and colonial administrators.

Image File history File links Swahili-pn. ... Image File history File links Swahili-pn. ...

Name

"Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language, and this is also sometimes used in English. 'Ki-' is a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes languages (see Noun classes below). Kiswahili refers to the 'Swahili Language'; Waswahili refers to the people of the 'Swahili Coast'; and Swahili refers to the 'Culture' of the Swahili People. (A common colloquialism, Uswahili, has been used for years in Tanzania as a derogatory term for "base" behaviour or attitude. Its relationship to actual Swahili culture is unclear and somewhat controversial.) See Bantu languages for a more detailed discussion of the grammar of nouns. In linguistics, a prefix is a type of affix that precedes the morphemes to which it can attach. ... In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... In linguistics, grammatical gender is a morphological category associated with the expression of gender through inflection or agreement. ... Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu vs. ...

Sounds

Swahili is unusual among sub-Saharan languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the exception of the Mijikenda dialect group that includes the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa). It has been suggested that Tonal language be merged into this article or section. ... The Mijikenda (literally the nine, also called the Nyika or Nika) are the nine tribes along the coast of Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania. ... Mombasa is the second largest city in Kenya, lying on the Indian Ocean. ...

Vowels

Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: /ɑ/, /ɛ/, /i/, /ɔ/, and /u/. They are very similar to the vowels of Spanish and Italian, though /u/ stands between /u/ and /o/ in those languages. Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows: This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. ...

• /ɑ/ is pronounced like the "a" in father
• /ɛ/ is pronounced like the "e" in bed
• /i/ is pronounced like the "i" in ski
• /ɔ/ is pronounced like the first part of the "o" in American English home, or like a tenser version of "o" in British English "lot"
• /u/ is pronounced between the "u" in rude and the "o" in rote.

Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately. Therefore the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced /tʃu.i/, with hiatus. In phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... Hiatus in linguistics is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels, sometimes with an intervening glottal stop. ...

Consonants

Notes: In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lips and the upper teeth, or viceversa. ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Postalveolar (or palato-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge (the place of articulation for alveolar consonants) and the palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants). ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Prenasalized stops are phonetic sequences of nasal plus plosive that behave phonologically like single consonant. ... Look up implosive in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A tenuis consonant is one which is unvoiced and unaspirated. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some obstruents. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ...

• The nasal stops are pronounced as separate syllables when they appear before a plosive (mtoto [m.to.to] "child", nilimpiga [ni.li.m.pi.ɠa] "I hit him"), and prenasalized stops are decomposed into two syllables when the word would otherwise have one (mbwa [m.bwa] "dog"). However, elsewhere this doesn't happen: ndizi "banana" has two syllables, [ndi.zi], as does nenda [ne.nda] (not *[nen.da]) "go".
• The fricatives in parentheses, th dh kh gh, are borrowed from Arabic. Many Swahili speakers pronounce them as [s z h r], respectively.
• Swahili orthography does not distinguish aspirate from tenuis consonants. When nouns in the N-class begin with plosives, they are aspirated (tembo [tembo] "palm wine", but tembo [tʰembo] "elephant") in some dialects. Otherwise aspirate consonants are not common.
• Swahili l and r are confounded by many speakers, and are often both realized as /ɺ/

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. ... Tapping palm wine in Democratic Republic of Congo Palm wine, also called palm toddy or simply toddy, is an alcoholic beverage created from the sap of various species of palm tree. ...

Noun classes

In common with all Bantu languages, Swahili grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes, counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system, with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these. Swahili employs sixteen: six classes that usually indicate singular nouns, five classes that usually indicate plural nouns, a class for abstract nouns, a class for verbal infinitives used as nouns, and three classes to indicate location. For the topic in theoretical computer science, see Formal grammar Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ... In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. ... Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof (July 23, 1857 — February 11, 1944) was a German linguist known as one of the first linguists to study African languages. ...

Nouns beginning with m- in the singular and wa- in the plural denote animate beings, especially people. Examples are mtu, meaning 'person' (plural watu), and mdudu, meaning 'insect' (plural wadudu). A class with m- in the singular but mi- in the plural often denotes plants, such as mti 'tree', miti trees. The infinitive of verbs begins with ku-, e.g. kusoma 'to read'. Other classes are harder to categorize. Singulars beginning in ki- take plurals in vi-; they often refer to hand tools and other artifacts. This ki-/vi- alteration even applies to foreign words where the ki- was originally part of the root, so vitabu "books" from kitabu "book" (from Arabic kitāb "book"). This class also contains languages (such as the name of the language Kiswahili), and diminutives, which had been a separate class in earlier stages of Bantu. Words beginning with u- are often abstract, with no plural, e.g. utoto 'childhood'. In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. ... Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... A diminutive is a formation of a word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning, smallness of the object or quality named, encapsulation, intimacy, or endearment. ...

A fifth class begins with n- or m- or nothing, and its plural is the same. Another class has ji- or no prefix in the singular, and takes ma- in the plural; this class is often used for augmentatives. When the noun itself does not make clear which class it belongs to, its concords do. Adjectives and numerals commonly take the noun prefixes, and verbs take a different set of prefixes. An augmentative is a suffix or prefix added to a word in order to convey the sense of a larger size. ...

The same noun root can be used with different noun-class prefixes for derived meanings: human mtoto (watoto) "child (children)", abstract utoto "childhood", diminutive kitoto (vitoto) "infant(s)", augmentative toto (matoto) "big child (children)". Also vegetative mti (miti) "tree(s)", artifact kiti (viti) "stool(s)", augmentative jiti (majiti) "large tree", kijiti (vijiti) "stick(s)", ujiti (njiti) "tall slender tree".

Although the Swahili noun class system is technically grammatical gender, there is a difference from the grammatical gender of European languages: In Swahili, the class assignments of nouns is still largely semantically motivated, whereas the European systems are mostly arbitrary. However, the classes cannot be understood as simplistic categories such as 'people' or 'trees'. Rather, there are extensions of meaning, words similar to those extensions, and then extensions again from these. The end result is a semantic net that made sense at the time, and often still does make sense, but which can be confusing to a non-speaker. In linguistics, grammatical gender is a morphological category associated with the expression of gender through inflection or agreement. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ...

Take the ki-/vi- class. Originally it was two separate genders: artifacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils & hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12). Examples of the first are kisu "knife"; kiti "chair, stool", from mti "tree, wood"; chombo "vessel" (a contraction of ki-ombo). Examples of the latter are kitoto "infant", from mtoto "child"; kitawi "frond", from tawi "branch"; and chumba (ki-umba) "room", from nyumba "house". It is the diminutive sense that has been furthest extended. An extension common to many languages is approximation and resemblance (having a 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish is English). For example, there is kijani "green", from jani "leaf" (compare English 'leafy'), kichaka "bush" from chaka "clump", and kivuli "shadow" from uvuli "shade". A 'little bit' of a verb would be an instance of an action, and such instantiations (usually not very active ones) are also found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford, a pass" from -vuka "to cross"; and kilimia "the Pleiades, from -limia "to farm with", from its role in guiding planting. A resemblance, or being a bit like something, implies marginal status in a category, so things that are marginal examples of their class may take the ki-/vi- prefixes. One example is chura (ki-ura) "frog", which is only half terrestrial and therefore marginal as an animal. This extension may account for disabilities as well: kilema "a cripple", kipofu "a blind person", kiziwi "a deaf person". Finally, diminutives often denote contempt, and contempt is sometimes expressed against things that are dangerous. This might be the historical explanation for kifaru "rhinoceros", kingugwa "spotted hyena", and kiboko "hippopotamus" (perhaps originally meaning "stubby legs"). Pleiades refers to: Pleiades (star cluster) an open cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus. ...

Another class with broad semantic extension is the m-/mi- class (Bantu classes 3/4). This is often called the 'tree' class, because mti, miti "tree(s)" is the prototypical example, but that doesn't do it justice. Rather, it seems to cover vital entities which are neither human nor typical animals: trees and other plants, such as mwitu 'forest' and mtama 'millet' (and from there, things made from plants, like mkeka 'mat'); supernatural and natural forces, such as mwezi 'moon', mlima 'mountain', mto 'river'; active things, such as moto 'fire', including active body parts (moyo 'heart', mkono 'hand, arm'); and human groups, which are vital but not themselves human, such as mji 'village', perhaps msikiti 'mosque', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive'. From the central idea of tree, which is thin, tall, and spreading, comes an extension to other long or extended things or parts of things, such as mwavuli 'umbrella', moshi 'smoke', msumari 'nail'; and from activity there even come active instantiations of verbs, such as mfuo "hammering", from -fua "to hammer", or mlio "a sound", from -lia "to make a sound". Words may be connected to their class by more than one metaphor. For example, mkono is an active body part, and mto is an active natural force, but they are also both long and thin. Things with a trajectory, such as mpaka 'border' and mwendo 'journey', are classified with long thin things in many languages. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Also, animals which are exceptional in some way and therefore don't fit easily in the other classes may be placed in this class.

The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive.^[4]

Verb affixation

Swahili verbs consist of a root and a number of affixes (mostly prefixes) which can be attached to express grammatical persons, tense and many clauses that would require a conjunction in other languages (usually prefixes). As sometimes these affixes are sandwiched in between the root word and other affixes, some linguists have mistakenly assumed that Swahili uses infixes which is not the case. It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... The root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. ... Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Most verbs, the verbs of Bantu origin, will end in '-a'. This is vital to know for using the Imperative, or Command, conjugation form.

In most dictionaries, verbs are listed in their root form, for example -kata meaning 'to cut/chop'. In a simple sentence, prefixes for grammatical tense and person are added, e.g. ninakata. Here ni- means 'I' and na- indicates present tense unless stated otherwise. For other uses, see Dictionary (disambiguation). ...

Verb Conjugation

ni-	-na-	kata
1sg	DEF. TIME	cut/chop

'I am cutting (it)'

Now this sentence can be modified either by changing the subject prefix or the tense prefix, for example:

u-	-na-	kata
2sg	DEF. TIME	cut/chop

'You are cutting'

u-	-me-	kata
2sg	PERFECT	cut/chop

'You have cut'

The simple present is more complicated and learners often take some of the phrases for slang before they discover the proper usage. Nasoma means 'I read'. This is not short for ninasoma ('I am reading'). -A- is the indefinite (gnomic tense) prefix, used for example in generic statements such as "birds fly", and the vowel of the prefix ni- is assimilated. It may be simpler to consider these to be a single prefix: Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speakers dialect or language. ... It has been suggested that Gnomic literature be merged into this article or section. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

na-	soma
1sg:GNOM	read

'I read'

mwa-	soma
2pl:GNOM	read

'You (pl) read'

The complete list of basic subject prefixes is (for the m-/wa- or human class):

	SINGULAR	PLURAL
1st PERSON	Ni-	Tu-
2nd PERSON	U-	M-
3rd PERSON	A-	Wa-

The most common tense prefixes are:

a-	gnomic (indefinite time)
na-	definite time (often present progressive)
me-	perfect
li-	past
ta-	future
hu-	habitual

However it is not only tenses in the sense the word is used in English that can be expressed by tense prefixes: conjunctions can be used in this context as well. For example ki- is the prefix for <conditional> - the sentence "nikinunua nyama wa mbuzi sokoni, nitapika leo" means 'If I buy goat meat at the market, I'll cook today'. The conjunction 'if' in this sentence is simply represented by -ki.

A third prefix can be added, the object prefix. It is placed just before the root and can either refer to a person, replace an object or emphasize a particular one, e.g.:

a-	na-	mw-	ona
3sg	DEF.T.	3sg.OBJ	see

'He (is) see(ing) him/her'

ni-	na-	mw-	ona	mtoto
1sg	DEF.T.	3sg.OBJ	see	child

'I (am) see(ing) the child'

There are not just prefixes. The root of a word is not really the one proposed by most dictionaries - the final vowel is an affix too. The suffix provided by dictionaries means <indicative>. Other forms occur for instance with negation, e.g. sisomi (the "-" in this case means null morpheme, i.e. it represents an empty space): A null morpheme is a morpheme that is realized by a phonologically null affix (an empty string of phonological segments). ...

si-	-	som-	-i
1sg.NEG	TENSE	read	NEG

'I am not reading/ I don't read'

Other instances of this change of the final vowel include the conjunctive, where an -e is implemented. This goes only for Bantu verbs ending with -a, ones derived from Arabic follow more complex rules.

Other suffixes, which once again look suspiciously like infixes, are placed before the end vowel, e.g.

wa-	na-	pig	-w	-a
3pl	DEF.T.	hit	PASSIVE	IND.

'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 evening')   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 reside.

Dialects of Swahili and languages closely related to Swahili^[5]

Dialects of Swahili

Modern standard Swahili is often considered to be based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar town, whereas its linguistic basis is thought to have originated from Kingozi, the language of the inhabitants of the ancient town of "Ngozi" in Burundi^{[citation needed]}. Ngozi is a first name from Southern Nigeria meaning Gods blessing. ...

. There are numerous local dialects of Swahili, including the following.^[6]

• Kiunguja: spoken in Zanzibar town and environs on 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 and Mafia Island.
• Kimgao: spoken around Kilwa and to the south.
• Kipemba: local dialect of the island of Pemba.
• Mijikenda, a group of dialects spoken in and around Mvita island. Includes Kimvita, 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).
• Kingozi: this is a special case as it was the language of the inhabitants of the ancient town of "Ngozi" in Burundi and is perhaps the basis of the Swahili language.
• Sheng: a sort of street slang, this is a blend of Swahili, English, and some 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.

Tanga Regions Districts Pangani is the name both of a town that lies 45 km south of Tanga, and of the district of which it is the administrative center. ... Genera Calicalicus Schetba Vanga Falculea Artamella Leptopterus Cyanolanius Oriolia Euryceros Tylas Hypositta Xenopirostris The vangas are a group of little-known small to medium sized passerine birds restricted to Madagascar. ... Dar es Salaam (دار السلام), formerly Mzizima, is the largest city (pop. ... Pwani Regions Districts Rufiji is one of the 6 districts of the Pwani Region of Tanzania. ... Mafia Island (Chole Shamba) is part of the Tanzanian Spice Islands, which consists also of Zanzibar and Pemba. ... Kilwa is one of the 6 districts of the Lindi Region of Tanzania. ... Map of Pemba Island Pemba is an island about 50 kilometres to the north of the island of Zanzibar. ... Mombasa is the second largest city in Kenya, lying on the Indian Ocean. ... Lamu town is the largest town on Lamu Island, which in turn is a part of the Lamu Archipelago in Kenya, (coordinates ). Lamu town is also the headquarters of Lamu District. ... Ngozi is a first name from Southern Nigeria meaning Gods blessing. ... Sheng is a Swahili-based patois, originating in Nairobi, Kenya, and influenced by the many languages spoken there. ... Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speakers dialect or language. ... Nairobi (pronounced ) is the capital and largest city of Kenya. ...

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, 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.

Comorian (Shikomor) is the most widely used language on the Comoros (independent islands in the Indian Ocean, off Mozambique and Madagascar). ... The Union of Comoros (until 2002 the Islamic Federal Republic of the Comoros) is an independent country at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean, between northern Madagascar and northern Mozambique. ... Barawa or Brava (Somali: Baraawe; Arabic: ; Bravanese: Mwiini or Nti ya Mbalazi) is a port town in the south eastern coast of Somalia. ...

The rise of Swahili to regional prominence^[7]

There is as yet insufficient historical or archaeological evidence to allow one to state with confidence when and where either the Swahili language or the Swahili ethnicity 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 invaders from the Oman conquered and Islamicized much of the Swahili territories, in particular the twin islands of Zanzibar and Pemba to the south and the port towns to the north (Mombasa, etc.). Historically, Swahili literature first flowered in the northern half, even though in our time Zanzibar's fame as a center of Swahili culture is greater.

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. Country Democratic Republic of the Congo Capital Lubumbashi Largest city Lubumbashi National language Swahili, Tshiluba Land area¹ 496 871 km² Governor Moïse Katumbi Chapwe Population Density 4 125 000 (est. ...

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 British and 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: 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^[8]. 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.

At the present time, about 90 percent of the approximately 35 million Tanzanians speak Swahili.^[9]. Kenya's population is about equal, but apparently, the prevalence of Swahili there is less, although still large. The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, but with the second language speakers in just the two nations of Kenya and Tanzania (possibly exceeding 50 million combined), Swahili now far outpaces Hausa in West Africa as the sub-Saharan indigenous language with the greatest number of speakers. At the same time, it must be realized that in fact no indigenous sub-Saharan language is widely spoken, relative to the total population of that part of the world. The 70 to 100 million Swahili speakers represent approximately ten percent of 743 million Sub Saharan Africans (2005 World Bank Data).

In non-African popular culture

In Civilization IV, the title music is a rearrangement of the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, sharing the same name - "Baba Yetu" ("Our Father"). [1] This article or section may contain excessive or improper use of copyrighted images and/or audio files. ... The Sermon on the Mount by Carl Heinrich Bloch. ...

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, my love!"

Disney's animated film The Lion King contains several Swahili references. The main character, "Simba", means lion, a character named "Rafiki" mean friend, and the popular song "Hakuna Matata" means "no problems". This article is about Disneys 1994 film. ...

Bungie Studios uses this language in some of its games (Halo 2).^{[citation needed]} Bungie Studios is an American video game developer founded in May 1991 under the name Bungie Software Products Corporation (more popularly shortened to Bungie Software) by two undergraduate students at the University of Chicago, Alex Seropian and Jason Jones that primarily concentrated on Macintosh games for its first nine... This article is about the video game. ...

See also

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Swahili

• Swahili literature
• Mandombe
• UCLA Language Materials Project

Image File history File links Wikibooks-logo-en. ... Wikibooks logo Wikibooks, previously called Wikimedia Free Textbook Project and Wikimedia-Textbooks, is a wiki for the creation of books. ... Swahili literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the Swahili language particularly by Swahili people of the East African coast and the neighbouring islands. ... The word Mandombe in the Mandombe script. ... The UCLA Language Materials Project (LMP) http://www. ...

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} L Marten, "Swahili", Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., 2005, Elsevier
2. ^ Prins 1961
3. ^
4. ^ See here for details.
5. ^ N&H 1993
6. ^ H.E.Lambert 1956, 1957, 1958
7. ^ Whiteley 1969; N&H 1993
8. ^ Whiteley 1969: 80
9. ^ Brock-Utne 2001: 123

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 Thomas J. Hinnebusch. 1993. Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history. 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.

External links

Swahili language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Ethnologue report on Swahili Ethnologue report on Swahili, Congo
• Omniglot's entry on the Swahili writing system
• UCLA report on Swahili
• PanAfrican L10n page on Swahili
• Swahili Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Factors of Its Development and Expansion
• Swahili educational and cultural Website
• New Testament in Swahili

Dictionaries, lexic and grammar: Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1058x1058, 477 KB) aa Wikipedia logo, version 1058px square, no text Wikipedia logo by Nohat (concept by Paullusmagnus); compare Wikipedia File links The following pages link to this file: Arabic language Talk:Anarcho-capitalism Talk:Algorithm Talk:Anno Domini Talk:The... Wikipedia (IPA: , or ( ) is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. ...

• The Kamusi Project: Internet Living Swahili Dictionary (Yale University)
• Online Swahili - English Dictionary
• Swahili - English Dictionary
• List of Swahili words of Arabic Origin
• On nominal classes in Swahili

Learning Swahili:

• Foreign Service Institute free text and training audio
• KiSwahili for Travlers at About
• Swahili for Travlers
• The UCLA Language Materials Project
• A New Swahili Language Method For Beginner Students
• Exercises

Live Streams

• Bongo Radio (Swahili / English, Tanzanian online radio station)
• ΒΒC news in Swahili