Swahili

Map of Swahili Coast

How does a national government enable communication between forty-two ethnic groups, speaking languages from three different language families?

One approach is to embrace an existing trade language widely spoken within the territory. At independence, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania made Swahili a national language. Tanzania, exclusively so, while Kenya and Uganda retained English, the colonial language, as well.

When I lived in Kenya, Swahili was taught in primary schools. Everywhere I travelled, people were at least bilingual; they spoke their native, tribal language, and Swahili. In urban areas, and among educated rural residents, English was also used.

During my first half year in country, every morning we’d take a bus over to a modest clapboard house converted into classrooms. We’d spend the morning learning new noun classes and speaking our growing vocabulary. Bwana Ezekiel and Bibi Martha led us patiently through our studies. I recall the first time I understood one of their jokes in Swahili; it seemed like a milestone.

Learning Swahili was easy compared to classes in Kikuyu. The reason lies all the way back to Swahili’s origin.

The Swahili Coast ran along eastern Africa from present day Somalia to Mozambique. ‘Swahili’ itself derives from an Arabic term, sawahil, or coasts. The Swahili coast encompassed a variety of resident ethnicities who traded with the Arab world. In fact, Swahili has assimilated many Arabic, and Persian words.

Originating from Bantu languages, another innovation Swahili made was to drop the Bantu language tones.

Repeat the following sentences aloud:

The money is not here.

The money is not here?

The money is not here!

You may notice that the word here sounds different based on the punctuation that proceeds it. In a tonal language, the here in each of those sentences could be three different words. Arabic isn’t a tonal language, and the Swahili Coast was dominated by Islamic rule. Over time, the tones disappeared.

This innovation spared me considerable frustration and aided my fairly rapid acquisition of a means of making myself understood even in the remotest areas of the country.