Distribution

TANZANIA, KENYA, UGANDA, MOZAMBIQUE, ZAIRE, Comoros, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Oman, Zambia.

Introduction

Swahili is the most important language in East Africa, with at least 60 million speakers. Only a minority speak Swahili as their mother tongue: most speak it as a second, third, or even fourth language. Swahili is the national language of Tanzania, one of the four African national languages of Zaire, and the official language of Kenya. It plays a very important role as a lingua franca in Eastern and to some extent Central Africa, where it is very widely used both in local trade and international broadcasting. It is used in a number of newspapers, and has a growing literature.

Recent research indicates that Swahili was emerging as a separate language as early as the ninth century, and that it probably originated from around the Tana River estuary in Kenya. But as trade developed, the language spread both up and down the East African coast, and into the interior. The name Swahili comes from the Arabic word sawāhil, meaning coasts, and the language contains a number of words of Arabic origin. However, the language is essentially African.

Swahili belongs to the Bantu family of languages, which are spoken by most Africans south of a line drawn roughly from Douala in Cameroon in the west, eastwards to the north of Lake Victoria; and from the east of Lake Victoria across to Brava in Somalia.