Kiswahili What is so special about Kiswahili? Kiswahili is unique. It deserves all of the attention that it gets. South Africans should take an interest in the Kiswahili language and its history. Kiswahili can show South African languages the way forward. Kiswahili is a success, and a cause for hope. Kiswahili is the one African language that is transnational in our continent. The other continental languages – Arabic, Portuguese, French and English – all originated outside our continent. We will consider them below. Kiswahili is spoken in more than 11 countries and has official status in 5 of them: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Union of the Comoros (where it is known as Comorian). Other countries with first-language Swahili-speaking populations include Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. In most of these countries there are also significant populations of second-language Kiswahili-speakers. Kiswahili: A modern language, with many dictionaries The rise of Kiswahili has taken place in modern times. This rise has taken place in parallel with two other languages that have established themselves in the modern world: Modern Hebrew and Afrikaans. All of these three languages have ancient origins. But they became what they are today in a deliberate phase of modern development beginning in the 19th Century, and consolidating in the 20th Century. Kiswahili first broke through the dictionary barrier in 1981, with the publication of the “Kamusi ya Kiswahili sanifu” (Standard Kiswahili Dictionary) in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. This dictionary has been revised and re-published at least 43 times to date, and is downloadable from the Internet. The publication of “Kamusi ya Kiswahili sanifu” (KKS) was met with pride and joy by Kiswahili speakers everywhere. It has been followed by many more monolingual Kiswahili dictionaries, some of them derived from KKS, and others being substantially new projects. One publisher alone offers five different monolingual Kiswahili dictionaries (Oxford University Press East Africa). Kiswahili has writers and readers Kiswahili-language publications are abundant in all aspects of literature from school and university books, to newspapers and magazines, to poetry and novels and comics. Swahili language appears in drama and in song. Because Kiswahili is a living language, with speakers, writers, readers and dictionaries, it is able to expand its vocabulary and its usages to accommodate modern life as it develops. There are thousands of indigenous languages spoken in Africa, but it is only with Kiswahili that the major problems appear to have been solved. In nearly all other cases it appears that the commanding heights of literature, politics and business are occupied by one of the four principal exogenous languages: Arabic, Portuguese, French and English. Other indigenous African languages may decline unless they follow Kiswahili’s example. Kiswahili’s strength comes partly from the monolingual Kiswahili dictionaries, as well as upon the Kiswahili-language literary culture that is buttressed by these monolingual dictionaries.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 03:28:07 +0000
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