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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. The number of current Swahili speakers, be they native or second-language speakers, is estimated to be over 200 million, with Tanzania known to have most of the native speakers.
Comorian is the name given to a group of four Bantu languages spoken in the Comoro Islands, an archipelago in the southwestern Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar. It is named as one of the official languages of the Union of the Comoros in the Comorian constitution. Shimaore, one of the languages, is spoken on the disputed island of Mayotte, a French department claimed by Comoros.
Mijikenda are a group of nine related Bantu ethnic groups inhabiting the coast of Kenya, between the Sabaki and the Umba rivers, in an area stretching from the border with Tanzania in the south to the border near Somalia in the north. Archaeologist Chapuruka Kusimba contends that the Mijikenda formerly resided in coastal cities, but later settled in Kenya's hinterlands to avoid submission to dominant Portuguese forces that were then in control. Historically, these Mijikenda ethnic groups have been called the Nyika or Nika by outsiders. It is a derogatory term meaning "bush people."
The Swahili people comprise mainly Bantu, Afro-Arab and Comorian ethnic groups inhabiting the Swahili coast, an area encompassing the Zanzibar archipelago and mainland Tanzania's seaboard, littoral Kenya, northern Mozambique, the Comoros Islands and Northwest Madagascar.
Nyika is a Swahili word meaning "bush" or "hinterland". More specifically, it can refer to:
Kenya is a multilingual country.
The Pokomo people are a Bantu ethnic group of southeastern Kenya. Their population in Kenya was 112,075 in 2019. They are a distinct ethnic group with their own sub-clans/tribes. Despite their proximity, they are not of the nearby Mijikenda people. They are predominantly agriculturalists and both freshwater and ocean fishermen living along the Tana River in Tana River County. They speak the Pokomo language, which is similar to Swahili.
The Segeju are a Bantu ethnolinguistic group mostly based in Tanzania's Tanga Region and Kenya's Kwale County. Most Segeju reside in the small coastal strip between the Tanzanian city of Tanga and the Kenyan-Tanzanian border. However, some Segeju have migrated to urban areas in other parts of Tanzania or Kenya, in hopes of better employment opportunities and quality of life. Segeju migration to urban areas often results in severance of community ties, leading to a lack of transmission of important cultural traditions and language.
Digo (Chidigo) is a Bantu language spoken primarily along the East African coast between Mombasa and Tanga by the Digo people of Kenya and Tanzania. The ethnic Digo population has been estimated at around 360,000, the majority of whom are presumably speakers of the language. All adult speakers of Digo are bilingual in Swahili, East Africa's lingua franca. The two languages are closely related, and Digo also has much vocabulary borrowed from neighbouring Swahili dialects.
The Bajuni people are a Bantu ethnic group who live primarily in the Bajuni Islands of Somalia and coastal areas between the port city of Kismayo and the city of Mombasa in Kenya. They relocated from Shungwaya (Somalia) to their current location due to war with Cushitic groups, who drove them out from their ancestral territory.
Bravanese, also called Chimwiini or Chimbalazi, is a Bantu language related to Swahili spoken by the Bravanese people, who are the predominant inhabitants of Barawa, or Brava, in Somalia. Maho (2009) considers it a distinct dialect, and it has been classified as a Northern Dialect of Swahili. However, it strongly distinguishes itself from standard Swahili under all linguistic considerations.
The Northeast Coast Bantu languages are the Bantu languages spoken along the coast of Tanzania and Kenya, and including inland Tanzania as far as Dodoma. In Guthrie's geographic classification, they fall within Bantu zones G and E.
The Mwani language, also known by its native name Kimwani, is a Bantu language spoken on the coast of the Cabo Delgado Province of Mozambique, including the Quirimbas Islands. Although it shares high lexical similarity (60%) with Swahili, it is not intelligible with it. It is spoken by around 167,150 people. Speakers also use Portuguese, Swahili and Makhuwa language. Kiwibo, the dialect of the Island of Ibo is the prestige dialect. Kimwani is also called Mwani and Ibo. According to Anthony P. Grant Kimwani of northern Mozambique appears to be the result of imperfect shift towards Swahili several centuries ago by speakers of Makonde, and Arends et al. suggest it might turn out to be a Makonde–Swahili mixed language.
The Shirazi also known as Mbwera, are a Bantu ethnic group inhabiting the Swahili coast and the nearby Indian ocean islands. They are particularly concentrated on the islands of Zanzibar, Pemba and Comoros.
Bajuni (Kibajuni), also known as Tikulu (Tikuu), is a Bantu language related to Swahili spoken by the Bajuni people who inhabit the tiny Bajuni Islands and coastal Kenya, in addition to parts of southern Somalia, where they constitute a minority ethnic group. Maho (2009) considers it a distinct dialect. Nurse & Hinnebusch classify it as a northern dialect of Swahili.
The Bantu peoples are an ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct native African ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. The languages are native to 24 countries spread over a vast area from Central Africa to Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa.
Shungwaya is an origin myth of the Mijikenda peoples. Traditions known collectively as the "Shungwaya myth" describe a series of migrations of Bantu peoples dating to the 12th–17th centuries from a region to the north of the Tana River. However according to Rodger F. Morton, coastal traditions recorded prior to 1897 indicate that the Shungwaya tradition entered Mijikenda oral literature only after this date and is therefore of doubtful veracity. These Bantu migrants were held to have been speakers of Sabaki Bantu languages. Other Bantu ethnic groups, smaller in number, are also suggested to have been part of the migration. From Shungwaya, the Mount Kenya Bantu are then proposed to have broke away and migrated from there some time before the Oromo onslaught. Shungwaya appears to have been, in its heyday, a multi-ethnic settlement with extensive trade networks. Between perhaps the 12th and 15th centuries, this settlement was subjected to a full scale invasion of Cushitic speaking Oromo peoples from he Horn of Africa. From the whole corpus of these traditions, it has been argued that Shungwaya comprised a large, multi-ethnic community.
Taita Cushitic is an extinct pair of South Cushitic languages, spoken by Cushitic peoples inhabiting the Taita Hills of Kenya, before they were assimilated into the Bantu population after the Bantu Migration into East Africa. Evidence for the languages is primarily South Cushitic loanwords in the Bantu languages Dawida and Saghala, as well as oral traditions of the Dawida and Saghala.
The Mwani people are a Bantu ethnic group primarily inhabiting the coastline of the Cabo Delgado Province of Mozambique. The Mwani people speak the Kimwani language, also known as the Ibo language, which is a Bantu language belonging to the Niger-Congo language family. They are often considered part of the Swahili cultural world as they have important connections with the East African coast
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- ↑ Nurse, Derek; Spear, Thomas (10 June 2017). The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800-1500. ISBN 9781512821666.
- ↑ Swahili and Sabaki: A linguistic history. University of California publications in linguistics. University of California Press. 1993. ISBN 9780520097759.
- ↑ Derek Nurse & Thomas J. Hinnebusch, 1993, Swahili and Sabaki: a linguistic history.
- ↑ Maho (2009)
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