is Swahili a semitic language?
Ok I know its probably not purely semitic because it has arab as well as bantu influences. Im from Lamu, Kenya coast and swahili is my first language. Swahili is spoken by 100 million people in east africa but only 3 million are native speakers so the other 97 million basically speak the most broken form of swahili. Most people who speak swahili but arent from the coast cant understand me and when im speaking with my mombasa friends they think we are speaking arabic. So Im just curious, is swahili classified as a semitic language, an afro semitic language, or a bantu language?
Here are links of different forms of swahili. The first two are coastal swahili and the last one is an upcountry form of swahili spoken by second language swahili spearkers.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=VhCyDMiIxtQ
the last video is the typical nairobi swahili speaker that is most commonly spoken but I dont consider it swahili because to me it doesnt sound as beautiful as swahili sanifu. The first two however are in pure swahili which most east africans even the ones that claim to speak swahili cant understand.
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Filed under: All about the Swahili language
The 100 million people you are referring to are speaking Kiswahili . It is not easy to define since its made up of different languages but I don’t think it is Semitic , it does have some Semitic influences , but also Bantu, nguni ,english , dutch & german….
Karibu Bwana
Edit: I am 3d language Swahili and I am probaly not in a potision to answer this Q. Great language thought.
Also people please distinques between Bantu & Nguni
Swahili is NOT a semitic language. It is Bantu. And of Course speakers of other Bantu languages don’t understand it… Belonging to the same group of languages implies similar structures, but can cover incredible ranges for phonetics, vocabulary and grammar… and yes, you are right that as a major lingua franca, Kiswahili is largely used in pidgin form… which doesn’t mean that your version of it is so pure or perfect to what might be called ‘classical’ swahili (the form that was initially so widely adopted) either… Remember that the language has been a communication device for centuries, but that relations have not been constant between the populations using it as a mother language and those using it as a second language, nor have native users necessarily held cultural dominion over the rest, or preserved it in its pristine original form.
Any Semitic elements in it are most likely loans from Arabic. Kenya has had major relations with the Arabic Peninsula, and it may very well be that local populations have adopted vocabulary or intonations from their neighbors, which other, more insulated populations would not have, and associate with the semites. This still does not make Swahili a semitic language.
It’s a Narrow Bantu language.