the people who speak the Swahili language are they swahilians? or ….?

4 Comments

1. Breandan says:

   November 4, 2009 at 10:32 am

   Categorizing by the language one speaks has always been risky but with all the migration around the world in the last century it’s pretty much useless now. There are hundreds of millions of people claiming to be Spanish simply because they speak Spanish but really their origins are in Africa or Asia. There are similar amounts of people who are called Anglos based on the language they speak even if they are Italians, Irish, Scottish, Greek, Russian.

   Previously, language was a good guide to heritage. Five hundred years ago an English speaker was probably English, a Japanese speaker was Japanese, and a German speaker was probably German. Today, due to the economic influence of the native speakers of these languages, most of the speakers of these languages are not English, Japanese, or German. Most speakers of Latin or Latin based languages aren’t Latin at all but their ancestors were conquered by the real Latins of Italy.

   Swahili, according to the cites below, is a conglomeration of several languages and might have origins in Asia, in Persia and Arabia. A speaker would be called a Swahili.
2. Tiff says:

   November 4, 2009 at 10:32 am

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili
3. robert m says:

   November 4, 2009 at 10:32 am

   Yes.
4. angelam219 says:

   November 4, 2009 at 10:32 am

   No, the language is called Kiswahili and the people are from a few different countries in eastern and southern Africa, near and including Kenya and Tanzania.