Swahili

The Swahili language is part of the Niger-Congo language family and originated with the Bantu people on the East African coast. Swahili’s vocabulary has long shared similarities with the Taita, Pokomo and Mijikenda languages. As the language evolved, Swahili added loan words from Persian, Hindustani Malay, and Arabic, with Arabic contributing the majority. Later Portuguese was introduced to the area and contributed additional loan words. Today 30% of Swahili’s language is derived from loan words.

Historically, Swahili has been written in the Arabic alphabet, with its earliest document dating to 1711, however today Swahili is written using the Latin alphabet.

Swahili is known natively as Kiswahili and is one of the most widely spoken languages on the African continent. Swahili is spoken in the African Great Lakes region including Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all of which recognise Swahili as an official language in their country. In addition to this Swahili is spoken in parts of Southern Africa and East Africa, including Mozambique and Burundi where Swahili is recognised as a minority language.

Swahili is commonly used as a lingua franca across these regions and is one of the working languages of the African Union. Swahili is also used as an official language by the East African Community and the Southern Africa Development Community.

It is difficult to know how many people speak Swahili, but some estimates are as high as 150 million. Swahili is an ideal language for reaching larger audiences across many regions of Africa. Swahili is well known both as a first and second language and is used in business, trade, and marketing.