As we have already told, the division of nouns in classes is the main characteristic of Bantu languages, the original structure of which owned a total of 22 classes, now reduced to a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 18 units. Standard Swahili derives from the Unguja language of Zanzibar, which at the time was the political hub of the region. It is commonly agreed the cradle of this language be identified with the archipelago of Lamu, from where it spread north and south along the coast to differentiate into an infinite variety of dialects: among the most important there is Amu, the Swahili spoken in Lamu, Mvita, the one of Mombasa, Pemba, from the homonymous Island, Unguja, spoken in Zanzibar and Shimasiwa, the dialect of the Comoros Islands. Linguists believe that Swahili birth remounts to the XII Century in the present-day Kenya, while first written texts in Arabic are to be dated approximately around the XV Century. The truth is that this ancient African language improved its vocabulary during centuries, borrowing terms as it came in contact with other languages. At the same time, basic communication levels may be achieved in few months thanks to the fact that phonetic transcription, which is based on the Latin alphabet, is very simple and grammar exceptions are extremely rare.įor long time people have thought Swahili was a language invented on purpose by Arab and Persian merchants who used to attend their interests on the Western Coast of Africa. Swahili, or Kiswahili (this is the term native speakers use to define it), language is relatively simple to be learnt: the agglutinating tendency may create some problems to students that will hardly manage the understanding of expressions such as “nimeshakuambia!”. In general, what has largely contributed to the spreading of Swahili all around the world is the exactitude of its linguistic rules: Swahili descends from the Bantu sub-branch of Niger-Congo languages, which are notorious for the mathematical precision of their structure, the strict division of nouns in classes and the abundant use of prefixes, infixes and suffixes to form verbs and adjectives. This was felt as extremely necessary, also taking into account the upcoming creation of “Jumbo Open Office”, the Swahili version of “Open Office”, and the on-line dictionaries of Swahili. In 2005, during the TUKI congress, the Institute of Swahili Research of Dar-es-Salaam tackled the problem of rendering more uniform and regular the excessively spontaneous lexical growth of Swahili. those linguistic borrowings introduced by speakers and by the mediation of specialized institutions. Swahili is the most nearly studied among African Diaspora languages to the extent that some of its terms have become quite common in Western Countries: I can’t believe you have never heard expressions like “Jambo!”, “Bwana, Hakuna Matata”…!Īs many of the expanding African Languages, Swahili is increasing thanks to the absorption of new expressions, i.e. For sure, Swahili is so popular a language among African ones spoken outside the Continent that a certain abuse of it is even made by Hollywood films.
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