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1 Swahili – key elements
1.1. The most popular language of Africa
Swahili is the most widely spoken language in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is spoken by approximately 50 million people in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, eastern Congo (DRC), the Comoros, and, marginally, in northern Mozambique, southern Somalia, northern Malawi, and northern Zambia (Map 1.1). Swahili is a national language in Tanzania, Kenya, and Congo (DRC). It also has official status in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda (along with English).
Map 1.1 Swahili speaking regions in East and Central Africa (circle indicates approximate extent) Credit: CIA 2013.
That said, Swahili is in most cases used as a second language, after local vernaculars. The majority of the people who speak Swahili as their primary language are concentrated along the East African coast, from northern Mozambique (city of Nacala) to southern Somalia (city of Barawa), and in the neighboring archipelagos of Zanzibar, Lamu, and the Comoros (Map 1.2).
Map 1.2 The Swahili Coast and neighboring places of the Indian Ocean Basin (Credit: Goldman 1996).
1.2. An authentic Bantu language
Swahili belongs to a family of languages called “Bantu” mostly spoken in Africa south of the Equator. Swahili has preserved a majority of the original Bantu terms and grammatical patterns (Guthrie 1967–1971, Whiteley 1969, Nurse and Spear 1985, and Nurse and Hinnebusch 1993).
However, due to its location in and along the Indian Ocean, Swahili has been exposed to a great number of cultures, languages, and ideas for a long time. As a result, the Swahili lexicon has increased through the creation of new terms and has incorporated numerous cultural terms from overseas languages like Arabic, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Turkish, and, more recently, English. In turn, these new terms have spread widely among continental African languages.
1.3. A relatively simple sound system
The Swahili sound system is characterized by five simple vowels /i e a o u/, as in
simba “lion”,
jengo “building”,
mama “mother”,
kopo “tin can”, and
uhuru “freedom, independence”. (The pronunciation of different words listed in this section may be found online; see symbol
.) It is also characterized by 25 consonants, as shown in
Table 1.1.
Like other Bantu languages, Swahili uses mostly a Consonant—Vowel—Consonant—Vowel syllable structure. In addition, Swahili does not use tones (variations in pitch height that distinguish word meanings) but rather accents most words on the second-to-last syllable. These different features make Swahili easy to pronounce, despite a relatively complex morphology.
Table 1.1 Swahili consonants illustrated
Table 1.1 gives a list of Swahili consonants with phonetic indications for their pronunciation in the case of difference with English and for consonants written with two letters. It is important to note that double vowels generally mean that two vowels are pronounced and not one long one (in this text, standard orthographic representations of individual sounds are given between slashes, while their phonetic representations are given between square brackets; sound representations between quotations marks are simple approximations). For a general presentation of the International Phonetic Alphabet used in square brackets in Table 1.1, and to hear the pronunciation of the different sounds, you may refer to this link: www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/flash.html (Ladefodged 2005). The next section provides indications about the articulation of particular consonants.
1.4. Articulation of the Swahili consonants: /j, gh, ng’/
1.4.1 The Swahili consonant /j/ [ɣ] vs. the semi-vowel /y/
To pronounce the Swahili consonant /j/ [ɣ], position the tongue as if you were to pronounce the semi-vowel /y/. In both cases, you hold the tongue tip behind the lower teeth and the body of the tongue to the roof of the mouth (or “palate”), as shown by the arrow in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1 Place of articulation for the Swahili sounds /j/ [ɣ] and /y/.
Figure 1.2 Place of articulation for the English sound /j/ [ʤ] and Swahili /nj/ [nʤ].
While the semi-vowel /y/ is pronounced with a very weak air release, the Swahili consonant /j/ [ɣ] is produced with a tight contact of the body of the tongue and the roof of the mouth, followed by a strong air release. For that reason, the Swahili sound /j/ [ɣ] appears as a combination of the consonant /g/ and the semi-vowel /y/, as you may notice by pronouncing successively the sounds /ga, ya, gya/. In linguistic jargon, it is called an “implosive voiced palatal stop” (Polomé 1967) or, more simply, a “palatal plosive” (you may refer to the following link for the pronunciation: www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/flash.html; Ladefodged 2005).
By contrast, the English sound /j/ [ʤ] and the complex Swahili sound /nj/ [nʤ] are pronounced by hold...
