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Swahili, also known by its local name Kiswahili, is a Bantu language originally spoken by the Swahili people, who are found primarily in Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique. Estimates of the number of Swahili speakers, including both native and second-language speakers, vary widely. They generally range from 150 million to 200 million; with most of its native speakers residing in Tanzania and Kenya.
Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to the south; Zambia to the southwest; and Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. According to the 2022 national census, Tanzania has a population of around 62 million, making it the most populous country located entirely south of the equator.
The modern-day African Great Lakes state of Tanzania dates formally from 1964, when it was formed out of the union of the much larger mainland territory of Tanganyika and the coastal archipelago of Zanzibar. The former was a colony and part of German East Africa from the 1880s to 1919 when, under the League of Nations, it became a British mandate. It served as a British mir II]], providing financial help, munitions, and soldiers. In 1947, Tanganyika became a United Nations Trust Territory under British administration, a status it kept until its independence in 1961. The island of Zanzibar thrived as a trading hub, successively controlled by the Portuguese, the Sultanate of Oman, and then as a British protectorate by the end of the nineteenth century.
"Mungu ibariki Afrika" is the national anthem of Tanzania. It is a Swahili language version of Enoch Sontonga's Xhosa language hymn "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika".
Bao is a traditional mancala board game played in most of East Africa including Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Comoros, Malawi, as well as some areas of DR Congo and Burundi. It is most popular among the Swahili people of Tanzania and Kenya; the name itself "Bao" is the Swahili word for "board" or "board game". In Tanzania, and especially Zanzibar, a "bao master" is held in high respect. In Malawi, a close variant of the game is known as Bawo, which is the Yao equivalent of the Swahili name.
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Following Tanganyika's independence (1961) and unification with Zanzibar (1964), leading to the formation of the state of Tanzania, President Julius Nyerere emphasised a need to construct a national identity for the citizens of the new country. To achieve this, Nyerere provided what has been regarded by some commentators as one of the most successful cases of ethnic repression and identity transformation in Africa.
Gweno is a Bantu language spoken in the North Pare Mountains in the Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania. The people known as the Gweno are a Chaga ethnic and linguistic group. Since the Chaga people are Bantu speakers, the adopted language contains dialects similar to that of the Kenyan language Kamba. Gweno shares about 54% to 56% of its vocabulary with other Chaga dialects and 46% with Taita dialects. However, a large percentage of its vocabulary is not seen in the other dialects. Also at the start of the 11th century, the Chaga people descended and migrated from the Bantu group in which they migrated to the foothills of mount Kilimanjaro. The Gweno language is today spoken mostly by older adults, with younger generations having shifted to Asu and Swahili. Ethnologue considers Gweno to be moribund; the language is not being passed down because children have not been exposed to Gweno since the 1970s. The generational shift from Gweno to either Asu or Swahili has certainly created shifts in dialect, however Gweno speakers do not see this as a threat.
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Standard Swahili language arose during the colonial era as the homogenised version of the dominant dialects of the Swahili language.
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References
- 1 2 Askew, Kelly (2002). Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania. Vol. 1. University of Chicago Press. pp. 181–182. ISBN 9780226029801.
- 1 2 Yambi, Josephine (Fall 2000). "Planned and spontaneous vocabulary expansion in Tanzanian Kiswahili". Studies in the Linguistic Sciences. 30 (2): 212. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.188.6044 .
- 1 2 Massamba, David PB (1989). "An assessment of the development and modernization of the Kiswahili language in Tanzania". In Coulmas, Florian (ed.). Language Adaptation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 64–65. ISBN 0-521-36255-5.
- ↑ Antia, Bassem (2000). Terminology and Language Planning: An Alternative Framework of Practice and Discourse. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 21. ISBN 9027223254.
- ↑ Schadeberg, Thilo C. (2009). "Loanwords in Swahili". In Haspelmath, Martin; Tadmor, Uri (eds.). Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook. De Gruyter Mouton. p. 76.
