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84-577: Lindi Bay ( Swahili language : Ghuba la Lindi) is a body of water in located in southern Lindi Region in south east Tanzania . Located in the Indian Ocean , the bay is 11.8km long, 5.9km at its widest and 750m at its shortest. The bay is fed by the Lukuledi River with the mouth of the river into the bay is located the town of Lindi , which is the regional capital of the Lindi region. The bay does not have

168-560: A 'little bit' of some characteristic, like -y or -ish in 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 found: kifo "death", from the verb -fa "to die"; kiota "nest" from -ota "to brood"; chakula "food" from kula "to eat"; kivuko "a ford,

252-466: A Bantu language, only making a superficial connection to Swahili. The dialect was noted again in 1841 by Casalis, who placed it within Bantu, and by Peters, who collected a short word list. In 1875 Hildebrandt published a Shinzwani vocabulary and suggested in 1876 that Shinzwani was an older form of Swahili. The idea of the distinctness of Shingazija and Shinzwani from Swahili finally gained prominence during

336-555: A Frenchman in Anjouan in 1856, identified the words as belonging to Shinzwani and noted some influence from Swahili. In his Swahili Grammar, Sacleux cautioned that although Swahili was spoken in the Comoros it must not be confused with the native languages of the Comoros, Shinzwani and Shingazija. He said that while Swahili was mostly spoken in cities, the Comorian languages were widely spoken in

420-668: A Monkey ;" " Mwalimu Goso, " "Goso the Teacher," a cumulative tale ; and " Sungura na Simba, " "The Hare and the Lion," a story about the trickster hare . Here are some of the proverbs that Steere recorded in Swahili: Here are some of the riddles that Steere recorded in Swahili: Comorian language Like Swahili , the Comorian languages are Sabaki languages , part of the Bantu language family. Each island has its own language, and

504-484: A full alphabet . Kurdish orthography wasn't unique in this regard. A similar direction was pursued in various Turkic languages such as Uzbek , Azerbaijani , Uyghur , and Kazakh , as well as languages of the Caucasus such as Western and Eastern Circassian languages and Chechen language . This makes Said Kamar-Eddine orthography for Comorian, a unique case for Sub-saharan African languages that have been written with

588-609: A glide or a vowel hiatus. Latin letters w and y , represented by و ‎ and ی ‎, are considered semivowels. When these letters follow another vowel, they are written sequentially. Other succession of vowels are treated as vowel hiatus . In these instances, a hamza ( ئ ‎) is written in between. Prenasalized consonants are written as digraphs, with either m ( م ‎) or n ( ن ‎). Comorian Latin Alphabet : Comorian Arabic (Kamar-Eddine's) Alphabet : As in other Bantu languages, Shikomor displays

672-782: A historical process in which /l/ became elided between the second last and last vowels of a word (for example, kondoo , "sheep" was originally kondolo , which survives in certain dialects ). As a consequence, long vowels are not considered phonemic . A similar process exists in Zulu . Where not shown, the orthography is the same as IPA. Some dialects of Swahili may also have the aspirated phonemes /pʰ tʰ tʃʰ kʰ bʱ dʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ/ though they are unmarked in Swahili's orthography. Multiple studies favour classifying prenasalization as consonant clusters, not as separate phonemes. Historically, nasalization has been lost before voiceless consonants, and subsequently

756-557: A major role in spreading both Christianity and Islam in East Africa . From their arrival in East Africa, Arabs brought Islam and set up madrasas , where they used Swahili to teach Islam to the natives. As the Arab presence grew, more and more natives converted to Islam and were taught using the Swahili language. From the arrival of Europeans in East Africa, Christianity was introduced to

840-573: A means of national integration in Tanzania. Key activities mandated for the organisation include creating a healthy atmosphere for the development of Swahili, encouraging use of the language in government and business functions, coordinating activities of other organisations involved with Swahili, standardising the language. BAKITA vision are: "1.To efficiently manage and coordinate the development and use of Kiswahili in Tanzania 2.To participate fully and effectively in promoting Swahili in East Africa, Africa and

924-647: 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 is 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

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1008-433: A prenasalized consonant, they are pronounced as [e] , [ɪ] , [o] , and [ʊ] . E is also commonly pronounced as mid-position after w . Polomé claims that /ɑ/ is pronounced as such only after w and is pronounced as [a] in other situations, especially after /j/ ( y ). A can be pronounced as [ə] in word-final position. Long vowels in Swahili are written as doubled vowels (for example, kondoo , "sheep") due to

1092-468: A second language spoken by tens of millions of people in the five African Great Lakes countries ( Kenya , DRC , Rwanda , Uganda , and Tanzania ), where it is an official or national language. It is also the first language for many people in Tanzania, especially in the coastal regions of Tanga, Pwani, Dar es Salaam, Mtwara and Lindi. In the inner regions of Tanzania, Swahili is spoken with an accent influenced by other local languages and dialects. There, it

1176-570: A shipping port, however, most of the marine vessels are the Lindi Ferry and dugout canoes used by the resident fishermen. The original inhabitants of the bay are the Mwera people . 9°57′S 39°45′E  /  9.950°S 39.750°E  / -9.950; 39.750 This Lindi Region location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Swahili language Swahili , also known by its local name Kiswahili ,

1260-469: A significant number of loanwords from other languages, mainly Arabic , as well as from Portuguese , English and German . Around 40% of Swahili vocabulary consists of Arabic loanwords, including the name of the language ( سَوَاحِلي sawāḥilī , a plural adjectival form of an Arabic word meaning 'of the coasts'). The loanwords date from the era of contact between Arab traders and the Bantu inhabitants of

1344-458: A substitute for k in advertisements. There are also several digraphs for Arabic sounds, which many speakers outside of ethnic Swahili areas have trouble differentiating. The language used to be primarily written in the Ajami script , which is an Arabic script. Much literature was produced in this script. With the introduction of Latin, the use of Ajami script has been diminished significantly. However,

1428-511: A system of concord but, if the noun refers to a human, they accord with noun classes 1–2 regardless of their noun class. Verbs agree with the noun class of their subjects and objects; adjectives, prepositions and demonstratives agree with the noun class of their nouns. In Standard Swahili (Kiswahili sanifu) , based on the dialect spoken in Zanzibar, the system is rather complex; however, it is drastically simplified in many local variants where Swahili

1512-671: A variety of gender-concord prefixes. This list is based on Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history . Modern standard Swahili, written in Latin, is based on Kiunguja, the dialect spoken in Zanzibar City . Swahili literature and poetry, traditionally written in Swahili Ajami , is based on Kiamu , the dialect of Lamu on the Kenyan Coast. But there are numerous other dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, such as

1596-502: Is a Bantu language of the Sabaki branch . In Guthrie's geographic classification , Swahili is in Bantu zone G, whereas the other Sabaki languages are in zone E70, commonly under the name Nyika. Historical linguists consider the Arabic influence on Swahili to be significant, since it takes around 15% of its vocabulary directly from Arabic , and was initially spread by Arab slave traders along

1680-582: Is a Bantu language originally spoken by the Swahili people , who are found primarily in Tanzania , Kenya , and Mozambique (along the East African coast and adjacent littoral islands). Estimates of the number of Swahili speakers, including both native and second-language speakers, vary widely. They generally range from 60 million to 150 million; with most of its native speakers residing in Tanzania. Swahili has

1764-648: Is a compulsory subject in all Kenyan primary and secondary schools. Swahili is recognized as a national language in the Democratic Republic of The Congo and is widely spoken in the eastern regions. The local dialects of Swahili in Congo are known as Congo Swahili and differ considerably from Standard Swahili. In order to strengthen political ties with other East African Community nations, both Kiswahili and English have been taught in Burundian elementary schools since

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1848-540: Is a first language for most of the people who are born in the cities, whilst being spoken as a second language in rural areas. Swahili and closely related languages are spoken by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi , Comoros , Malawi , Mozambique , Zambia and Rwanda . The language was still understood in the southern ports of the Red Sea in the 20th century. The East African Community created an institution called

1932-404: Is a strong preference for penultimate stress. There was previously a tone system in the language, but it has been mostly phased out and no longer plays an active role in the majority of cases. Comorian is most commonly written in Latin alphabet today. Traditionally and historically, Arabic alphabet is used as well but to a lesser extent. Arabic alphabet has been unviersally known in Comoros, due to

2016-434: 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, as in many other languages with noun classes. This may be further extended to anything dealing with time, such as mwaka 'year' and perhaps mshahara 'wages'. Animals exceptional in some way and so not easily fitting in

2100-466: Is closely related to Swahili and is sometimes considered a dialect of Swahili, although other authorities consider it a distinct language. In 2022, based on Swahili's growth as a prominent international language, the United Nations declared Swahili Language Day as 7 July to commemorate the date that Julius Nyerere adopted Swahili as a unifying language for African independence struggles. Swahili

2184-581: Is generally only spoken by Somali nationals who have resided in Kenya and subsequently returned to Somalia. Lastly, a closely related language Mushunguli (also known as Zigula, Zigua, or Chizigua) is spoken by some of the Somali Bantu ethnic minority mostly living in the Jubba Valley . It is classified as a Northeast Coast Bantu language as Swahili is and has some intelligibility with Swahili. Swahili played

2268-570: Is not a native language, such as in Nairobi. In non-native Swahili, concord reflects only animacy: human subjects and objects trigger a-, wa- and m-, wa- in verbal concord, while non-human subjects and objects of whatever class trigger i-, zi- . Infinitives vary between standard ku- and reduced i-. ("Of" is animate wa and inanimate ya, za. ) In Standard Swahili, human subjects and objects of whatever class trigger animacy concord in a-, wa- and m-, wa-, and non-human subjects and objects trigger

2352-430: Is one of the early developers. The applications include a spelling checker , part-of-speech tagging , a language learning software , an analysed Swahili text corpus of 25 million words, an electronic dictionary , and machine translation between Swahili and English. The development of language technology also strengthens the position of Swahili as a modern medium of communication. Furthermore, Swahili Misplaced Pages

2436-556: Is one of the few Wikipedias in an African language that features a substantial number of contributors and articles. The widespread use of Swahili as a national language in Tanzania came after Tanganyika gained independence in 1961 and the government decided that it would be used as a language to unify the new nation. This saw the use of Swahili in all levels of government, trade, art as well as schools in which primary school children are taught in Swahili, before switching to English (medium of instruction) in secondary schools (although Swahili

2520-960: 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"). 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. However, it seems to cover vital entities 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', and, by analogy, mzinga 'beehive/cannon'. From

2604-553: Is spoken along the Benadir coast by the Bravanese people . Another Swahili dialect known as Kibajuni also serves as the mother tongue of the Bajuni minority ethnic group, which lives in the tiny Bajuni Islands as well as the southern Kismayo region. In Oman , there are an estimated 52,000 people who speak Swahili as of 2020. Most are descendants of those repatriated after the fall of

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2688-562: Is still taught as an independent subject). After Tanganyika and Zanzibar unification in 1964, Taasisi ya Uchunguzi wa Kiswahili (TUKI, Institute of Swahili Research) was created from the Interterritorial Language Committee. In 1970 TUKI was merged with the University of Dar es Salaam , while Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa (BAKITA) was formed. BAKITA is an organisation dedicated to the development and advocacy of Swahili as

2772-674: Is the lingua franca of other areas in the African Great Lakes region and East and Southern Africa . Swahili is also one of the working languages of the African Union and of the Southern African Development Community . The East African Community created an institution called the East African Kiswahili Commission (EAKC) which began operations in 2015. The institution currently serves as

2856-416: Is to use the Arabic gemination diacritic Shaddah on letters that are most similar to the missing consonant phoneme. This is similar to the tradition of Sorabe (Arabo-Malagasy) orthograhpy, where a geminated r ( رّ ‎) is meant to represent [nd] or [ndr] , and where a geminated f ( فّـ ࢻّ ‎) is meant to represent [p] or [mp] . There are two types of vowel sequencees in Comorian,

2940-454: Is used for the vowel [o] . This is a unique innovation exclusive to this orthography. The letter hāʾ in these shapes is not used as vowel in any other Arabic orthography. A letter hāʾ , in a fixed medial zigzag shape (medial form of what's known in Urdu as gol he ) ( ‍ہ‍ ‎) is used for the vowel [e] . The usage of this variant of the letter hāʾ as a vowel is not unique to Comorian. In

3024-512: The East African coast. The word `Swahili' comes from an Arabic name for the area, meaning "coasts": The core of the Swahili language originates in Bantu languages of the coast of East Africa. Much of Swahili's Bantu vocabulary has cognates in the Unguja , Pemba , and Mijikenda languages and, to a lesser extent, other East African Bantu languages . While opinions vary on the specifics, it has been historically purported that around 16–20% of

3108-473: The Sabaki language . In fact, while taking account of daily vocabulary, using lists of one hundred words, 72–91% were inherited from the Sabaki language (which is reported as a parent language) whereas 4–17% were loan words from other African languages. Only 2–8% were from non-African languages, and Arabic loan words constituted a fraction of that. According to other sources, around 40% of the Swahili vocabulary comes from Arabic. What also remained unconsidered

3192-522: The Sultanate of Zanzibar . There are Swahili-based slangs, pidgins and creoles: In 1870, Edward Steere published Swahili Tales as Told by Natives of Zanzibar , a collection of 23 Swahili tales with facing-text English translation, along with a selection of proverbs and riddles. Some of the tales included are: " Kisa cha Punda wa Dobi, " "The Story of the Washerman's Donkey," also known as " The Heart of

3276-513: The Tanganyika African National Union used Swahili as a language of mass organisation and political movement. This included publishing pamphlets and radio broadcasts to rally the people to fight for independence. After gaining independence, Swahili was adopted as the national language. To this day, Tanzanians carry a sense of pride when it comes to Swahili, especially when it is used to unite over 120 tribes across Tanzania. Swahili

3360-484: The 1970s, it was regarded as a dialect or archaic form of Swahili. This was first proposed in 1871, when Kersten suggested it might be a mixture of Shingazija, Swahili, and Malagasy. In 1919 Johnston, referring to it as 'Komoro Islands Swahili - the dialect of 'Mohila' and 'the 'Mohella' language', suggested that, taken together with the other two dialects in the Comoros, it might be an ancient and corrupt form of Swahili. However, Ottenheimer et al. (1976) found this to not be

3444-420: The Arabic script (an unmodified version as opposed to proposals such as that of Mwalimu Sikujua) was relatively high. There were also differences in orthographic conventions between cities and authors and over the centuries, some quite precise but others different enough to cause difficulties with intelligibility. Thus despite a lack of official governmental backing, attempts at standardization and Swahilization of

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3528-482: The Arabic script continued into the 20th century. Swahili nouns are separable into classes , which are roughly analogous to genders in other languages. In Swahili, prefixes mark groups of similar objects: ⟨m-⟩ marks single human beings ( mtoto 'child'), ⟨wa-⟩ marks multiple humans ( watoto 'children'), ⟨u-⟩ marks abstract nouns ( utoto 'childhood'), and so on. And just as adjectives and pronouns must agree with

3612-568: The Arabic script that were sent to the Portuguese of Mozambique and their local allies. The original letters are preserved in the Historical Archives of Goa, India . Various colonial powers that ruled on the coast of East Africa played a role in the growth and spread of Swahili. With the arrival of the Arabs in East Africa, they used Swahili as a language of trade as well as for teaching Islam to

3696-597: The Arabic script. In the initial position, the vowels are written as a single letter. No preceding alif or hamza is required. (This is similar to the convention of Kazakh Arabic alphabet ) In Kurdish , new vowel letters were created by adding accents on existing letters. The phonemes [o] and [e] are written with ۆ ‎ and ێ ‎ respectively. In Comorian, new independent letters were assigned instead. The letter hāʾ in two of its variants are used for both aforementioned phonemes. A standard Arabic hāʾ , in all its 4 positional shapes ( ه هـ ـهـ ـه ‎)

3780-471: The Comoros sometime between the 5th and 10th centuries, before the Shirazi Arabs. The Shimwali dialect was possibly one of the earliest Bantu languages to be recorded by a European. On July 3, 1613, Walter Payton claimed to have recorded 14 words on the island of Moheli , stating "They speak a kind of Morisco language." Sir Thomas Roe and Thomas Herbert also claimed to have recorded vocabulary. Until

3864-552: The East African Kiswahili Commission (EAKC) which began operations in 2015. The institution currently serves as the leading body for promoting the language in the East African region , as well as for coordinating its development and usage for regional integration and sustainable development. Swahili is among the first languages in Africa for which language technology applications have been developed. Arvi Hurskainen

3948-884: The East African coast, the archipeligo being connected by deep trade links to the mainland, and Comorian being a Bantu language much like Swahili language , means that historically, the Arabic orthography of Comorian followed the Swahili suit in being part of the tradition of the African Ajami script . Key components of the Ajami tradition are mainly that vowels were always represented with diacritics (thus differing from Persian conventions). The letters alif ا ‎, wāw و ‎, and yāʼ ي ‎ were used for indicating stressed syllable or long vowels. Furthermore, whereas Bantu languages have 5 vowels, while Arabic has 3 vowels and 3 diacritics; until recently, specifically until

4032-402: The Latin script when writing the Comorian language although the Ajami script is still widely used, especially by women. Recently, some scholars have suggested that the language may be on its way to endangerment, citing the unstable code-switching and numerous French words used in daily speech. It is the language of Umodja wa Masiwa , the national anthem. The first Bantu speakers arrived at

4116-772: The Shimaore dialect, if when inserting a prefix the leading consonant becomes intervocalic, [p] becomes [β] , [ɗ] becomes [l] , [ʈ] becomes [r] , [k] becomes [h] , and [ɓ] is deleted. There is a preference for multi-syllable words and a CV syllable structures. Vowels are frequently deleted and inserted to better fit the CV structure. There is also an alternate strategy of h -insertion in scenarios which would otherwise results in VV. I 5 . DEF kukuyi 5 .rooster li-hi(h)a 5 . NOM -crow. PRF I kukuyi li-hi(h)a 5.DEF 5.rooster 5.NOM-crow.PRF The rooster crowed There

4200-414: The Swahili vocabulary is derived from loan words, the vast majority Arabic , but also other contributing languages, including Persian , Hindustani , Portuguese , and Malay . Omani Arabic is the source of most Arabic loanwords in Swahili. In the text "Early Swahili History Reconsidered". However, Thomas Spear noted that Swahili retains a large amount of grammar, vocabulary, and sounds inherited from

4284-460: The academic year 2005/2006. Kiswahili is now used widely in Burundi but is not recognised as an official language; only French, Kirundi, and English have this distinction. Since 2013, Swahili has been included in the all Burundian education system. Uganda adopted Kiswahili as one of its official languages (alongside English ) in 2022, and also made it compulsory across primary and secondary schools in

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4368-679: The case. Instead, they classify Shimwali, as well as the other Comorian languages, as a separate language group from Swahili. Shinzwani was first noted by a South African missionary Reverend William Elliott in 1821 and 1822. During a 13-months' mission stay on the island of Anjouan he compiled a vocabulary and grammar of the language. Elliott included a 900-word vocabulary and provided 98 sample sentences in Shinzwani. He does not appear to have recognized noun- classes (of which there are at least six in Shinzwani) nor does he appear to have considered Shinzwani

4452-459: 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 "metal forging", from -fua "to forge", 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

4536-463: The country. The Swahili language is not widespread in Somalia and has no official status nationally or regionally. Dialects of Swahili are spoken by some ethnic minorities on the Bajuni islands in the form of Kibajuni on the southern tip of the country and in the town of Brava in the form of Chimwiini ; both contain a significant amount of Somali and Italian loanwords. Standard Swahili

4620-472: The countryside. Shingazija was not documented until 1869 when Bishop Edward Steere collected a word list and commented that he did not know which language family it belonged to. In 1870 Gevrey characterized both Shingazija and Shinzwani as the 'Souaheli des Comores' (Swahili of the Comoros) which was only a 'patois de celui de Zanzibar'. However, Kersten noted in 1871 that Shingazija was not at all like Swahili but

4704-694: The court system. With the Germans controlling the major Swahili-speaking region in East Africa, they changed the alphabet system from Arabic to Latin. After the First World War, Britain took over German East Africa, where they found Swahili rooted in most areas, not just the coastal regions. The British decided to formalise it as the language to be used across the East African region (although in British East Africa [Kenya and Uganda] most areas used English and various Nilotic and other Bantu languages while Swahili

4788-486: The early 20th century, West and East Circassian Arabic orthography also used this variant of the letter hāʾ to represent the vowel [ə] (written as ы in Cyrillic). Letters representing consonant phonemes that are not present in Arabic have been formed in either of the two following methods. First method is similar to Persian and Kurdish , where new letters are created by adding or modifying of dots. The second method

4872-452: The early 20th century, there hasn't been an agreed upon way of writing the vowels [ e ] and [ o ] . Furthermore, sounds unique to Bantu languages were generally shown with the closest matching letter in the Arabic alphabet, avoiding as much as possible the creation of new letters in order not to deviate from the authentic 28-letter base. In addition, prenasalized consonants were shown using digraphs. The 20th century marked

4956-544: The east coast of Africa, which was also the time period when Swahili emerged as a lingua franca in the region. Due to concerted efforts by the government of Tanzania , Swahili is one of three official languages (the others being English and French) of the East African Community (EAC) countries, namely Burundi , Democratic Republic of the Congo , Kenya , Rwanda , Somalia , South Sudan , Tanzania , and Uganda . It

5040-481: The entire world over". Although other bodies and agencies can propose new vocabularies, BAKITA is the only organisation that can approve its usage in the Swahili language. Tanzanians are highly credited for shaping the language to appear the way it is now. In Kenya, Kiswahili has been the national language since 1964 and is official since 2010. Chama cha Kiswahili cha Taifa (CHAKITA) was established in 1998 to research and promote Kiswahili language in Kenya. Kiswahili

5124-497: The fact that there was a near univesal attendance at Quranic schools on the islands, whereas knowledge and literacy in French was lacking. Since independence from France , the situation has changed, with improvements to infrastructure of secular education, in which French is the language of instruction. Note : In Shimaore , the digraphs " vh " and " bv " are used for representing the phoneme [ β ] . Comoros being located near

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5208-500: The following: Maho (2009) considers these to be distinct languages: The rest of the dialects are divided by him into two groups: Maho includes the various Comorian dialects as a third group. Most other authorities consider Comorian to be a Sabaki language, distinct from Swahili. In Somalia , where the Afroasiatic Somali language predominates, a variant of Swahili referred to as Chimwiini (also known as Chimbalazi)

5292-442: The former are kisu "knife", kiti "chair" (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 diminutives in many languages is approximation and resemblance (having

5376-410: The four are conventionally divided into two groups: the eastern group is composed of Shindzuani (spoken on Ndzuani ) and Shimaore (Mayotte), while the western group is composed of Shimwali ( Mwali ) and Shingazija ( Ngazidja ). Although the languages of different groups are not usually mutually intelligible , only sharing about 80% of their lexicon, there is mutual intelligibility between

5460-431: The gender of nouns in some languages with grammatical gender, so in Swahili adjectives, pronouns and even verbs must agree with nouns. This is a characteristic feature of all the Bantu languages . The ki-/vi- class historically consisted of two separate genders, artefacts (Bantu class 7/8, utensils and hand tools mostly) and diminutives (Bantu class 12/13), which were conflated at a stage ancestral to Swahili. Examples of

5544-456: The language continues to have a tradition of being written in Arabic script. Starting from the later half of the 19th century, continuing into the 20th century, and going on in the 21st century, a process of "Swahilization" of the Arabic Script has been underway by Swahili scribes and scholars. The first of such attempts was done by Mwalimu Sikujua , a scholar and poet from Mombasa . However,

5628-557: The languages within each group, suggesting that Shikomori should be considered as two language groups, each including two languages, rather than four distinct languages. Historically, the language was written in the Arabic-based Ajami script . The French colonial administration introduced the Latin script . In 2009 the current independent government decreed a modified version of the Latin script for official use. Many Comorians now use

5712-449: The latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th century. In 1883, an analysis by Gust distinguished Shinzwani from Swahili. He discusses Shinzwani and Swahili as two separate languages which had contributed to the port-language which he referred to as Barracoon. In 1909 two publications reaffirmed and clarified the distinctiveness of Shinzwani, Shingazija and Swahili. Struck published a word list which appeared to have been recorded by

5796-563: The leading body for promoting the language in the East African region , as well as for coordinating its development and usage for regional integration and sustainable development. In recent years South Africa , Botswana , Namibia , Ethiopia , and South Sudan have begun offering Swahili as a subject in schools or have developed plans to do so. Shikomor (or Comorian ), an official language in Comoros and also spoken in Mayotte ( Shimaore ),

5880-575: The local Bantu peoples . This resulted in Swahili first being written in the Arabic script. The later contact with the Portuguese resulted in the increase of vocabulary of the Swahili language. The language was formalised in an institutional level when the Germans took over after the Berlin conference . After seeing there was already a widespread language, the Germans formalised it as the official language to be used in schools. Thus schools in Swahili are called Shule (from German Schule ) in government, trade and

5964-405: The original emphatic consonants /dˤ, sˤ, tˤ, ðˤ/ and the uvular /q/ , or lengthening a vowel, where aspiration would be used in inherited Bantu words. Swahili is now written in the Latin alphabet. There are a few digraphs for native sounds, ch , sh , ng ' and ny ; q and x are not used, c is not used apart from the digraph ch , unassimilated English loans and, occasionally, as

6048-626: The other classes may be placed in this class. The other classes have foundations that may at first seem similarly counterintuitive. In short, Borrowings may or may not be given a prefix corresponding to the semantic class they fall in. For example, Arabic دود dūd ("bug, insect") was borrowed as mdudu , plural wadudu , with the class 1/2 prefixes m- and wa- , but Arabic فلوس fulūs ("fish scales", plural of فلس fals ) and English sloth were borrowed as simply fulusi (" mahi-mahi " fish) and slothi (" sloth "), with no prefix associated with animals (whether those of class 9/10 or 1/2). In

6132-402: The phoneme [o] . Furthermore, the usage of the 3 mater lectionis (or vowel carrier letters) followed the following convention too: Vowels in stressed ( second-to-last ) syllable of the word are marked with diacritic as well as a carrier letter, namely alif ا ‎ for vowel [a] , yāʼ ي ‎ for vowels [e] and [i] , and wāw و ‎ for vowels [o] and [u] . But, in

6216-521: The process of naturalization of borrowings within Swahili, loanwords are often reinterpreted, or reanalysed, as if they already contain a Swahili class prefix. In such cases the interpreted prefix is changed with the usual rules. Consider the following loanwords from Arabic: Similarly, English wire and Arabic وقت waqt ("time") were interpreted as having the class 11 prevocalic prefix w- , and became waya and wakati with plural nyaya and nyakati respectively. Swahili phrases agree with nouns in

6300-447: The proposal by Said Kamar-Eddine for Comorian, there was a departure from the Ajami tradition and a divergence from what was done by Swahili literaturists. Kamar-Eddine had an eye on Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan , and the orthographic reforms implemented there. In Kurdish, the direction of the reforms of the alphabet favoured elimination of all diacriticts and designating specific letters to each and every vowel sound, thus creating

6384-407: The region. While the Arabs were mostly based in the coastal areas, European missionaries went further inland spreading Christianity. As the first missionary posts in East Africa were in the coastal areas, missionaries picked up Swahili and used it to spread Christianity, since it contained many similarities with other indigenous languages in the region. During the struggle for Tanganyika independence,

6468-534: The spread of a standardized indigenous variation of Arabic script for Swahili was hampered by the colonial takeover of East Africa by the United Kingdom and Germany . The usage of Arabic script was suppressed in German East Africa and to a lesser extent in British East Africa . Nevertheless, well into the 1930s and 1940s, rural literacy rate in Arabic script as well as a local preference to write Swahili in

6552-598: The start of a process of orthographic reform and standardization across the Muslim world . This process included standardizing, unifying, and clarifying the Arabic script in most places, ditching the Arabic script in favour of Latin or Cyrillic in others in places such as Soviet Turkistan and Soviet Caucasus , to Turkey and Kurdistan , to the Eastern African coast ( Swahili Ajami ) and Comoros. The mantle of standardization and improvement of Arabic-based orthography in Comoros

6636-401: The voiced consonants have devoiced, though they are still written mb, nd etc. The /r/ phoneme is realised as either a short trill [ r ] or more commonly as a single tap [ ɾ ] by most speakers. [x] exists in free variation with h, and is only distinguished by some speakers. In some Arabic loans (nouns, verbs, adjectives), emphasis or intensity is expressed by reproducing

6720-545: Was a separate Bantu language. Torrend was the first to identify the difference between Shingazija and Shinzwani in 1891. He attempted to account for Shingazija by suggesting that it was a mixture of Shinzwani and Swahili. The consonants and vowels in the Comorian languages: The consonants mb , nd , b , d are phonemically implosives , but may also be phonetically recognized as ranging from implosives to voiced stops as [ᵐɓ~ᵐb] , [ⁿɗ~ⁿd] , [ɓ~b] , [ɗ~d] . A glottal stop [ʔ] can also be heard when in between vowels. In

6804-465: Was carried by the literaturist Said Kamar-Eddine (1890-1974) in 1960. Only two decades before, in 1930s and 1940s, Swahili literaturists such as Sheikh el Amin and Sheikh Yahya Ali Omar had developed the Swahili Arabic alphabet as well. In Swahili , two new diacritics were added to the 3 original diacritics , namely ◌ٖ ‎ to represent the phoneme [e] , and ◌ٗ ‎ to represent

6888-581: Was mostly restricted to the coast). In June 1928, an inter-territorial conference attended by representatives of Kenya , Tanganyika , Uganda , and Zanzibar took place in Mombasa . The Zanzibar dialect was chosen as standard Swahili for those areas, and the standard orthography for Swahili was adopted. Estimates of the total number of first- and second-language Swahili speakers vary widely, from as low as 50 million to as high as 200 million, but generally range from 60 million to 150 million. Swahili has become

6972-568: Was that a good number of the borrowed terms had Bantu equivalents. The preferred use of Arabic loan words is prevalent along the coast, where local people, in a cultural show of proximity to, or descent from Arab culture, would rather use loan words, whereas the people in the interior tend to use the Bantu equivalents. It was originally written in Arabic script . The earliest known documents written in Swahili are letters written in Kilwa , Tanzania , in 1711 in

7056-566: Was used to strengthen solidarity within the nation, and remains to be a key identity of the Tanzanian people. Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes : /ɑ/ , /ɛ/ , /i/ , /ɔ/ , and /u/ . According to Ellen Contini-Morava , vowels are never reduced , regardless of stress . However, according to Edgar Polomé , these five phonemes can vary in pronunciation. Polomé claims that /ɛ/ , /i/ , /ɔ/ , and /u/ are pronounced as such only in stressed syllables. In unstressed syllables, as well as before

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