Related Research Articles
The Bantu languages are a language family of about 600 languages that are spoken by the Bantu peoples of Central, Southern, Eastern and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages.
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.
The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages, one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world. The languages of Africa belong to many distinct language families, among which the largest are:
The Gusii language is a Bantu language spoken in Kisii and Nyamira counties in Nyanza Kenya, whose headquarters is Kisii Town,. It is spoken natively by 2.2 million people, mostly among the Abagusii. Ekegusii has only two dialects: The Rogoro and Maate dialects. Phonologically, they differ in the articulation of /t/. Most of the variations existing between the two dialects are lexical. The two dialects can refer to the same object or thing using different terms. An example of this is the word for cat. While one dialect calls a cat ekemoni, the other calls it ekebusi. Another illustrating example can be found in the word for sandals. While the Rogoro word for sandals is chidiripasi, the Maate dialect word is chitaratara. Many more lexical differences manifest in the language. The Maate dialect is spoken in Tabaka and Bogirango. Most of the other regions use the Rogoro dialect, which is also the standard dialect of Ekegusii.
Kenya is a multilingual country.
Barawa, also known as Barawe and Brava, is the capital of the South West State of Somalia. It functions as a port town in the southwestern Lower Shebelle region of Somalia. Facing the Indian Ocean, Barawa serves as the main port of the South West State.
Demographic features of Somalia's inhabitants include ethnicity, language, population density, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. Somalia is believed to be one of the most homogeneous countries in Africa.
The endoglossic language of Somalia has always been Somali, although throughout Somalia's history various exoglossic languages have also been used at a national level.
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.
Bangala or Mɔnɔkɔ na bangála is a Bantu language spoken in the northeast corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it is also spoken in parts of South Sudan and some speakers are still found in the extreme western part of Uganda. A sister language of Lingala, it is used as a lingua franca by people with different languages and rarely as a first language. In 1991 there were an estimated 3.5 million second-language speakers. It is spoken to the east and northeast of the area where Lingala is spoken. In Lingala, Bangala translates to "People of Mongala". This means people living along the Mongala River. Across Bas-Uele Province, Bangala speakers have to a great extent adopted Lingala.
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 Somali Bantus are a Bantu ethnic minority group in Somalia who primarily reside in the southern part of the country, primarily near the Jubba and Shabelle rivers. The Somali Bantus are descendants of enslaved peoples from various Bantu ethnic groups from Southeast Africa, particularly from Mozambique, Malawi, and Tanzania. The East African slave trade was not eliminated until the early parts of the 20th century.
The Banaadiri people are a people group in Somalia. Banaadiris largely inhabit Somalia's southern coastline.
The Bravanese people, also known as the Barawani, are a minority ethnic group inhabiting the city of Barawe of Somalia.
The Sabaki languages are the Bantu languages of the Swahili Coast, named for the Sabaki River. In addition to Swahili, Sabaki languages include Ilwana (Malakote) and Pokomo on the Tana River in Kenya, Mijikenda, spoken on the Kenyan coast; Comorian, in the Comoro Islands; and Mwani, spoken in northern Mozambique. In Guthrie's geographic classification, Swahili is in Bantu zone G, whereas the other Sabaki languages are in zone E70, commonly under the name Nyika.
Rangi or Langi is a Bantu language spoken by the Rangi people of Kondoa District in the Dodoma Region of Central Tanzania. Whilst the language is known as Rangi in English and Kirangi in the dominant Swahili spoken throughout the African Great Lakes, the self-referent term is Kilaangi.
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 (1993) 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.
The official languages of the Comoros are Comorian, French and Arabic, as recognized under its 2001 constitution. Although each language holds equal recognition under the constitution, language use varies across Comorian society. Unofficial minority languages such as Malagasy and Swahili are also present on the island with limited usage. According to Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer, a professor of anthropology at Kansas State university, the linguistic diversity of the Comoros is the result of its rich history as part of the Indian maritime trade routes and its periods of Malagasy and French colonial rule.
Sidi is a Bantu language of Pakistan and India, related to Swahili. Most of the Sidi community today speaks a regional Indic language, mostly Gujarati, mixed with some Bantu words and phrases, and the current number of speakers is unknown. It was reportedly still spoken in the 1960s in Jambur, a village in Kathiawar, Gujarat, by the Siddi. A survey of regional languages conducted by the government of Gujarat in 2016 reported that the language is in danger of extinction.
References
- ↑ "Languages of Somalia". Ethnologue. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
- ↑ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
- ↑ I. M. Lewis, Islam in tropical Africa, Volume 1964, (International African Institute in association with Indiana University Press: 1980), p.7.
- ↑ Abdullahi, p.11.
- 1 2 Nurse, Derek; Hinnebusch, Thomas J.; Philipson, Gérard (1993). Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History. Univ of California Press. ISBN 9780520097759.
- ↑ Henderson, Brent. "About". chimiini.org. Archived from the original on 2018-09-03.
- ↑ "Chimiini Language Project". users.clas.ufl.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-06-12. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
