Am Kenyan - Born and raised and I lived at the Kenyan Coast. Kiswahili is very widely spoken and loved here. I studied Kiswahili as a language and i very much admire the rich vocabulary and idioms. It is both a national and an official language in Kenya and most of Eastern Africa.
Majority of Kenyans and East-africans are multi-lingual and they will speak on average 3 languages (English, Kiswahili, the mother-tongue and most likely an additional local language.) if they are Bantu, they will also understand 3 or more other languages and same if they are Nilotic or Cushitic.
If your are foreigner, visiting for tourism - you will very much unlikely understand Kenyans! and if you are a foreigner of they type " i lived in Kenya for 10 years" most likely in a posh residence in Nairobi or Mombasa -- Kenyans are likely to have spoken to you in English throughout! Do not mistake that for the idea that Kenyans only speak in English - remember i said majority are multilingual and given that we have over 42 different languages - the language that mostly unites us is Swahili - it is also deemed less elitist.
The language is spoken across the entire East africa - (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique (Swahili name - Msumbiji), Burundi, Rwanda and Eastern DRC Congo.)
The article is an excerpt from a more detailed book and I agree with most it - but the author could have done a better job at investigating the origin of the language and early spread. It has borrowed heavily from Bantu, Arabic (countless words) and Portuguese (e.g. Pesa - money in Swahili, Meza - a table in Swahili).
I've noticed that Westerners from larger countries, and from English speaking countries in particular, always struggle with grasping that in some and perhaps many places, people just speak a handful of languages. I am from a small European country, and I was also raised and schooled in four, and on top come electives and classics if you are so inclined.
The impression what is commonly spoken is very much biased by this assumption. Many just don't speak one language all day long.
that's right. "Ki" in this context is a prefix that's used to denote a language or the language spoken by a people ("ki ya lugha" - ki of language). This is exactly like English has language suffixes -ish, -ic, -iese, -ian; for example English, spanish, arabic, japanese, vietnamese. Where "ki" globally serves in Swahili, for example kiswahili (language for the swahili - people of the coast), kiingereza (english), kirusi (russian), and if you don't know the correct language used in a place/country it's valid to say kiukraine (language spoken by the people of ukraine)
As a Kenyan I found this read quite delightful, containing a lot I didn't know of the history of a language we speak.
> Nyerere personally translated two of William Shakespeare’s plays into Swahili to demonstrate the capacity of Swahili to bear the expressive weight of great literary works.
I literally asked what is the social convention for setting up the language that will be used in further conversation.
Since I never lived in a country with multiple languages, I wonder how it is done, especially when multiple people are involved. The convention/algorithm here can be interesting from networking point of view.
With 2 people probably some sort of recognition/negotiation is involved first? Maybe person A says "Hello", while person B says "Guten tag" and then the first person knows that they can try to use English or German. But what happens where the group is larger? Also what happens when person A doesnt speak language B and person B doesnt speak language A? How do they negotiate some other language C, since they know few? (obviously some language might be the default) Probably there is some social convention to do that too -> and Im curious how it works, because it sounds like an interesting topic. Do people list the languages that they speak? Or do they have some other clever trick. Still my speculations dont explain how this dynamics work for larger groups, what is an even more complicated topic.
The rest of your comment, where you basically wrote that you can recognize what language to use on basis of how a person looks sounds very patronizing, if not racist.
I'm not sure how true this article is, hopefully some others in Africa can speak to their personal experiences.
For me, when I lived in Kenya English was the lingua franca for official/business activity. Some older professional Kenyans I knew learned Swahili only after learning English (and their mother language, Luo for instance). On the street, Swahili was standard.
The Tanzanians I met however, considered Nairobi Swahili not even 'real' Swahili and more of a mish-mash for disparate speakers who might otherwise choose their mother tongue when possible.
And then there's Sheng - a creole that is an even further evolution from Swahili and various other languages.
I spent 3 years driving 54,000miles around the coastline through 35 countries. [1]
In my experience, Swahili wasn't widely spoken, really only in a region of East Africa around Uganda/Kenya/Tanzania - which I also realized many foreigners come to think of as "Africa" because that's where they go on safari. It was great to drive from Tanzania into Burundi, or Ethiopia into Djibouti and not see a single foreigner for a month.
Certainly French is the language of the West Coast and of many hundreds of millions of people. I'm guessing if it also had Nigeria's 200million it would be the dominant language on the continent.
English, again, is common in the places tourists frequent, but otherwise not widespread outside the capital cities.
The vast majority of people even in very, very remote mud hut communities spoke at least two languages. 3+ was very common.
After learning kiswahili in Tanzania I went to Uganda for a vacation... At the bus terminal a bwana eventually pulled me aside and told me to quit speaking kiswahili there, because only the thieves spoke it there. I wasn't sure if I should be offended or humiliated. Anyway I went with english/spanish/swahili mixing after that cause brain. Either way skinny dipping in the blue nile was great.
English and French are indeed lingua francas but depending on the country or even the city you're in, they can be used as equally as lingua franca with the dominant local language.
People in Africa fluidly switch languages mid-conversation or even mid-sentence. In DRC for example, it's common to see a conversation in French and Swahili, or French and Lingala, or Lingala and Swahili. But most people will make an effort to stick to French when talking to a foreigner.
I've also heard Kenyans say that Congolese people speak Swahili weird because they use French loanwords.
> Swahili lacks the numbers of speakers, the wealth, and the political power associated with global languages such as Mandarin, English or Spanish. But Swahili appears to be the only language boasting more than 200 million speakers that has more second-language speakers than native ones.
Not to detract anything from the article or Swahili, but surely this must be the case for English as well? Wikipedia on "English language" says:
Native speakers: 360–400 million
L2 speakers: 750 million
Nigeria has people whose home language is English. I’ve worked with some. I doubt there are many Nigerians who only speak English and Nigerian English as spoken on the street can be as different from the British standard as Scots or Jamaican patois but there are plenty of native English speakers on Africa. This shouldn’t be that surprising. The Indian subcontinent has plenty of ruling class Brown Englishmen like the Bhuttos or Gandhis who are on their third or fourth generation of English language medium education. Anglophone Africa isn’t that different in that respect. The ruling class spoke English at independence and people from different language communities who have a common language in English will raise English speaking children.
Not disagreeing with the essence of what you said, but truthfully “L1” and “L2” is distinction without a difference because nobody can agree on what an L1 speaker or L2 speaker is and many people speak their putative L2 language better than their L1 language. Also many of the speaker counts on Wikipedia are very inaccurate and are just ballpark figures.
Arabic or French must be the most spoken language in Africa, or maybe English.. I don't know if all of East Africa's population (Coastal East Africa and countries where Swahili is common) is equal to that of Nigeria alone.
The Maghreb seems to be often understood as a kind of extension of the Middle East. Which makes some sense, because it is ethnically, culturally and historically a very different region from the rest of Africa.
that's true but it's more accurate to say we're ethnically, culturally and historically mediterraneans. because for most of history the mediterranean was a highway and the desert was a frontier.
Tangential but what's the outlook for the African Union as a force for democracy? I know China has been making strong headway into some parts of the continent but I'd like to remain hopeful that Africa has a bright future as a power of the people.
Wouldn't Africa be better off if English became the most spoken language? There are more resources, technical and otherwise, available in English than Swahili. I wonder what the income effect of knowing English is for an Indian, compared to someone who only knows Hindi. I'd guess that it's significant.
It seems to me this article is pushing an ideal that doesn't really exist.
The article itself admits that "Africa’s Swahili-speaking zone now extends across a full third of the continent." That excludes two-thirds of the continent.
For example, in South Africa, there are a whopping eleven official languages, including Xhosa and Zulu (both so-called "Bantu" languages like Swahili), but Swahili is not one of them.
The same is true of most other Southern African countries: Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
There has been an effort to begin teaching Swahili in schools in both South Africa and Botswana, at least. But such efforts don't have a good track record of success. Take a look at Ireland, where students are taught the Irish language in school but, for the most part, are terrible at it. It seems unlikely that imposing a language on countries that don't natively speak it will succeed.
I can't speak for the original poster, but Bantu as a word has pergoritive associations, which mean it's not commonly used today.
In South Africa during apartheid, Bantu was used as a synonym for Black. The "self governing" regions were known as Bantustans and so on.
Like with most words, Bantu has a neutral actual meaning, but it's been corrupted by use and would not typically be used by a polite (white) person today - at least in Southern Africa.
Beyond that, "Bantu" is a colonial term, coined by German colonist Wilhelm Bleek. Bleek has been described as "the first serious thinker about and systematic theorist of ‘race’ in colonial South Africa." He studied African languages but called them "primitive", comparing them to the communication of non-human primates.
Not surprisingly given this history, the word "Bantu" was notoriously used by the apartheid government of South Africa as a catch-all term for indigenous people, regardless of their actual ethnicity.
But somehow, linguists haven't gotten any of these memos and continue to use the term to describe a family of languages. That may be because Western linguistics has deeply racist roots:
> Western linguistics particularly its study of Eurasian languages, arose against a background of Eurocentrism, colonial racism, nationalism and related theories, later espoused by Nazism and other White Supremacy movements. The following article argues that significant traces of this racism remain in contemporary Indology and South Asian lingustics—casting a long shadow over how the world is viewed.
> I think you may have an incorrect understanding of the meaning of "so-called".
Read my original comment as, "don't exist as a category."
> Beyond that, "Bantu" is a colonial term, coined by German colonist Wilhelm Bleek.
Per wikipedia, he came up with the name Bantu from a hypothetical reconstruction of the word "people" in the proto-Bantu language. So regardless of his politics or ideology, the term itself seems rather innocuous in origin.
Having said that, if it has picked up racist connotations, feel free to suggest an alternative term. The "so-called Bantu language family" seems rather unwieldy.
> But somehow, linguists haven't gotten any of these memos and continue to use the term to describe a family of languages. That may be because Western linguistics has deeply racist roots
Or, because linguists aren’t crazy Twitter-obsessed kids who want to purify everything.
A language encodes so much of a people's culture and tradition that giving it up is not a choice to be made lightly. Don't succumb to linguistic imperialism.
> Wouldn't Africa be better off if English became the most spoken language?
No. Superficially it may seem like it but practically it would stagnate their native languages and dumb down the population.
> There are more resources, technical and otherwise, available in English than Swahili.
Yes there is. But the exercise of translating resources to your own language helps advance a language and a peoples. A few days ago we had a submission about how some of the translators of goethe became some of the best english writers.
All you have to do is look at the resurgence of europe and european culture as europe "abandoned" latin in favor of the native languages. We wouldn't have shakespeare without the push towards linguistic nationalism - the move to translate bible, etc to one's own native language.
> I wonder what the income effect of knowing English is for an Indian, compared to someone who only knows Hindi. I'd guess that it's significant.
It depends on whether india supports an english-first system or hindi first system. Besides only a small fraction of jobs within each country requires english.
English dependence can be viewed as why india and so much of africa is so poor and undeveloped. You need a healthy amount of national pride to develop your country. Japan, South Korea, China, etc developed through their own languages.
Doesn't mean I think everyone should abandon english. Learn what you want, but foster and develop your own languages.
> English dependence can be viewed as why india and so much of africa is so poor and undeveloped. You need a healthy amount of national pride to develop your country. Japan, South Korea, China, etc developed through their own languages.
You’re totally cherry picking your examples, to the point that no one can take what you wrote seriously at all. Afghanistan has their own language, Amazon tribes even have their own language…how are those countries/areas doing right now?
The suggestion was to demote the native language in favor of english since english had the knowledge. My point was to elevate the native language by bringing that knowledge ( english, arabic, russian, chinese, french, etc ) into your native language.
> it was to prefer English over Swahili as a 'lingua-franca' across regions.
That's what I'm against. And it's a good thing england didn't prefer french ( lingua-franca ) over its native language or we'd all be speaking french. It's a good thing descartes was translated into english rather than everyone speaking french. From a practical standpoint, it just makes sense to prioritize your native language.
>English dependence can be viewed as why india and so much of africa is so poor and undeveloped. You need a healthy amount of national pride to develop your country. Japan, South Korea, China, etc developed through their own languages.
Even if there's such a correlation (which I'm not convinced of) it's probably not cause and effect but both caused by colonisation.
In all fairness linguistic nationalism killed many regional languages. The European regional languages that survived were only due to either geographic isolation or much higher than average population density.
Of course it would be better off, but you can say that for a lot of places / a lot of languages.
I lived in Tanzania for a couple years and learned a bit of swahili and the lack of online resources is a huge barrier for education. If you only know Swahili, the world is very small.
In South Africa, English is the most spoken language (of their 11 official ones). It’s the one almost everyone understands, brown, black, white. But people still have their own languages. Afrikaans, all the former tribal languages, and probably more I don’t know about.
My experience is rather narrow, but besides some very young (pre 1st grade) children who only spoke their tribal language (Request: If anyone is offering online tutoring in Sesotho, I’d love to get contacted), I never encountered anyone who didn’t speak English.
If you look at the numbers, it seems like English is the most spoken language in Africa. It's also the official language of the most populous African nation (Nigeria).
There are 22 official languages in India and there is no national language. In most schools in most cities it is english first (at home anyways you would be speaking your mother tongue)
>>> English dependence can be viewed as why india and so much of africa is so poor and undeveloped. You need a healthy amount of national pride to develop your country. Japan, South Korea, China, etc developed through their own languages.
No just national pride is not enough to develop. "development" is a complex issue which can't be boiled down to one or two reasons.
First of all I was referring to the American war of independence era. Second, as I understand it English or British ancestry is very under-reported in the US due to it being the default and people focus on more exotic, original origins.
French is also widely spoken language there. So, choosing a third one might be a compromise or which I suspect more is an attempt at decolonization. After all, if you are trying to establish your independence and proud identity, using the languages of the people who were trading you like cattle might not be the most uplifting idea.
Cultural center dentity is all well and good but should take a back seat to economic prosperity.
Arguments using emotionally loaded terms like "languages of the people who were trading you like cattle " move the focus from prosperity to social justice.
After all, when making the reverse argument in favour of English, you wouldn't want to hear "why push for a language best suited to trading cattle"?
As much as you may want cultural heritage, it's better for the individual to be fluent in English than in Swahili.
Well, if you are not the one traded like cattle, it is rather easy to sit and talk all about rationality and pragmatism. I'm sure that if you go there and explain them the errors in their thinking and in their way of life they will be totally appreciative of that.
I'm not african and I'm not even sure if my hypothesis is close to the truth, however, trying to make historical facts disappear because they are not pretty is not how it works.
When talking about heritage in regard to the english language, don't forget that it is not their heritage or at least that their heritage is french and arabic as well.
> Well, if you are not the one traded like cattle, it is rather easy to sit and talk all about rationality and pragmatism.
My ancestors were. Go back far enough in any populations geneaology, and you'll find something similar.
> I'm not african and I'm not even sure if my hypothesis is close to the truth, however, trying to make historical facts disappear because they are not pretty is not how it works.
Who advocated for that? No, seriously, where did you read that historical facts should be "disappeared"?
> When talking about heritage in regard to the english language, don't forget that it is not their heritage or at least that their heritage is french and arabic as well.
So? Having a heritage (and everyone's got one) doesn't mean that it's the most important thing to have, or preserve.
I advocated that economic prosperity is a higher priority than conservative values.
"According to the UN, the language had its origins in East Africa, and Swahili speakers are spread over more than 14 countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Comoros, and as far as Oman and Yemen in the Middle East.
Southern African countries such as South Africa and Botswana have introduced it in schools, while Namibia and others are considering doing so."
There's an ongoing series on youtube by a creator who spent quite a while touring bits of Africa and doing his best to communicate in a local language (he speaks several languages at various levels of proficiency)
Having studied a lot of Arabic back in the day, I was fascinated by how many similarities there are in Swahili. I wonder if this influence is conquest based or occurred prior to Islam or if Swahili influences migrated northward. Interesting.
Swahili was born as a language of communication between the Arab merchants, from Oman, and the local Bantu population. That was in Zanzibar, which was an Arabian merchant outpost, much safer than the African mainland. So it has a Bantu grammar substrate and lots of Arabic loanwords.
Majority of Kenyans and East-africans are multi-lingual and they will speak on average 3 languages (English, Kiswahili, the mother-tongue and most likely an additional local language.) if they are Bantu, they will also understand 3 or more other languages and same if they are Nilotic or Cushitic.
If your are foreigner, visiting for tourism - you will very much unlikely understand Kenyans! and if you are a foreigner of they type " i lived in Kenya for 10 years" most likely in a posh residence in Nairobi or Mombasa -- Kenyans are likely to have spoken to you in English throughout! Do not mistake that for the idea that Kenyans only speak in English - remember i said majority are multilingual and given that we have over 42 different languages - the language that mostly unites us is Swahili - it is also deemed less elitist.
The language is spoken across the entire East africa - (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique (Swahili name - Msumbiji), Burundi, Rwanda and Eastern DRC Congo.)
The article is an excerpt from a more detailed book and I agree with most it - but the author could have done a better job at investigating the origin of the language and early spread. It has borrowed heavily from Bantu, Arabic (countless words) and Portuguese (e.g. Pesa - money in Swahili, Meza - a table in Swahili).