Introduction
The Swahili language has evolved into Africa’s most recognised language
outside the continent boasting over 200 million speakers. It is now spoken by
a full third of the African continent. Swahilili has a prominent presence
in today's media including radio and the internet and is broadcast regularly
in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC), Kenya, Liberia,
Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland and Tanzania. Given that the
populations of the continent speak an estimated two thousand languages
(roughly one-third of all human languages) Swahili offers the feeling of
unity among peoples across the continent of Africa and into the diaspora.
Today, at least two countries have adapted Swahili as their national language,
Kenya and Tanzania. In Tanzania, it is also the official language.
The name comes from the Arabic word sawaahili (سواحلي), which means
“of the coasts”. Kiswahili refers to the language itsself meaning “language of
the coastal people”. “Swahili” is the commonly accepted way of referring to
the language when speaking (or writing) English. When speaking in the native
language, the language is is refered to as "Kiswahili".
Origin
The roots of Swahili can be traced back to the Bantu migrations that began thousands of years ago, when Bantu-speaking peoples began to spread across eastern and southern Africa. Bantu languages spoken along the coast of East Africa including Pokomo, Taita, and Mijikenda form the core of the Swahili language. With the arrival of the Arabs in East Africa, Swahili became a language of trade along the eastern coast as well as for teaching Islam to the local Bantu peoples. Historically, it has been purported that about one tenth or so of the Swahili vocabulary is derived from loan words, mostly Arabic, but also from other African languages, English, Portugese, Hindustani, Persian, and Malagasy. However, it should be noted that most of the borrowed terms had Bantu equivalents. Arabic loan words are usually preffered for use along the coast, where local people identify with the Arab culture or are descent from Arab culture, whereas the people in the interior tend to use the Bantu equivalents.
History
The earliest signs of Swahili speaking peoples date back to 1100 A D.
They were located in a string of settlements along the East African
coast of the Indian Ocean, stretching from present-day Somalia in the
North to present-day Mozambique in the South.
The core of Swahili language comes from Bantu languages along the coast
of East Africa. A great deal of Swahili includes Bantu languages
especially those of Taita, Mijikenda, Pokomo and to a lesser extenent
other Bantu languages in East Africa.
Over many centuries, Arabian traders interacted with the inhabitants of
the east coast of Africa. As a result, Swahili emerged with a great
deal of arab loan words and became a lingua franca used by several
closely related Bantu-speaking tribal groups.
Since there was no mutual comprehension between the various ethnic groups
despite their linguistic similarity, Swahili was a welcome tool for
intertribal interaction. Moreover Swahili was not identified with any
particular ethnic group; so it was everybody's language.
Despite a considerable number of Arabic lexical items, Swahili was
fundamentally a Bantu language both in morphosyntax and vocabulary.
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 villages along the new
trade routes. The trade and migration helped spread the Swahili dialect
of Zanzibar Town (Kiunguja) to the interior of Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda,
Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Rebublic,
and Mozambique.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the spread of Swahili into other
parts of Kenya was bolstered by the fact that it was the language of
the Arab ivory and slave trade caravans, and ended up going as far as
Uganda and Congo to the West.
Later, Christian missionaries learned Swahili as the language of
communication to spread the Gospel in Eastern Africa and spread the
language through their schools and publications.
Swahili is a language of multiple dialects – the Kimvita spoken at
Mombasa, for instance, or the Kiamu of Lamu and others.
During the colonial period, The British and Germans were both eager
to facilitate their rule over colonies where dozens of languages were
spoken, by selecting a single local language that could be well
accepted by the natives. Swahili was the only viable candidate.
In order to establish Swahili as an official language it was necessary
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.
The version of standard Swahili taught today is for practical purposes
Zanzibar Swahili, though there are minor discrepancies between
the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.