01
Origins
The Sabaki languages developed on the coast of what is now Kenya in the second half of the first millennium CE, among farming and fishing communities. Swahili (Kiswahili, from Arabic sawāḥil 'coasts') grew up in the trading towns that multiplied along the coast from Mogadishu to Kilwa and in the Comoros. It is a Bantu language through and through, close to Mijikenda and Comorian in grammar and basic vocabulary.
02
An Indian Ocean Language
The coastal towns traded across the Indian Ocean with Arabia, Persia, India and beyond, and Swahili absorbed a large layer of Arabic vocabulary together with Persian, Hindi and later Portuguese words, such as kitabu 'book', saa 'hour' and meza 'table'. For centuries it was written in Arabic script. The oldest dated manuscript, the epic Utendi wa Tambuka, is from 1728. Across the channel, Comorian and the Bantu speakers of northwest Madagascar were in contact with Malagasy, the Austronesian language of Madagascar recorded on the Austronesian tree.
03
Language of a Region
In the 19th century Swahili spread inland along caravan routes to the Great Lakes and the Congo, and German and British colonial administrations used it (now in Latin letters) as a language of government. After independence Julius Nyerere made Swahili the national language of Tanzania and a pillar of nation-building. He translated Shakespeare into it himself. Today Swahili has perhaps 100 million or more speakers, most of them second-language users, and it is an official language of the African Union.
In its own words
Habari gani?
- Habari
- gani?
Sources (1)
Where it’s spoken
- Comoros
- Kenya
- Mayotte
- Tanzania
Turning points
- Split
Sabaki on the coast
The ancestors of the Sabaki languages settle the Kenyan coast and separate from their inland Eastern Bantu relatives. Swahili develops in the coastal towns.
Sources (1)
- Sound law
Swahili loses *l between vowels
In many Swahili words, Proto-Bantu *l between vowels disappears: *-lɪla 'cry' → -lia. The change helps separate Swahili from its closest Sabaki relatives.
Compare with other loss across families →
Sources (1)
- Contact
Indian Ocean trade
Trade with Arabia, Persia and India, and the spread of Islam along the coast, bring a large Arabic vocabulary into Swahili, together with Persian, Indian and later Portuguese words.
Sources (1)
- Writing
Swahili in Arabic script
The epic Utendi wa Tambuka is copied in 1728, the oldest dated Swahili manuscript, in Arabic script adapted for Swahili sounds. Latin script replaces it under colonial rule.
Sources (1)
- Contact
Along the caravan routes
Coastal traders carry Swahili inland to the Great Lakes and the eastern Congo, where it becomes a lingua franca of trade and later of colonial administration.
Sources (1)
- Revitalization
A national language
Under Nyerere, Swahili becomes the national language of Tanzania, used in government and primary education, and it becomes an official language of Kenya and later of the African Union.
Sources (1)
Contested classifications
- Largely rejected
Swahili as a mixed Arabic–Bantu language
Evidence for
The large Arabic vocabulary, the Islamic culture of the coastal towns and the Arabic-script literature led colonial-era writers, and some coastal traditions, to describe Swahili as the product of Arab colonisation.
Evidence against
Swahili's grammar, noun classes and core vocabulary are Bantu and match its Sabaki relatives closely. The Arabic words are loans concentrated in religion, trade and learned vocabulary. Nurse and Spear showed that the Swahili towns grew out of local African communities.
Sources (1)