Swahili Language Guide

Official language in
Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda
Also spoken in
Congo - Kinshasa
Script
Latin

Where it's spoken

Kenya's constitution names Kiswahili as the national language of Kenya and, together with English, one of its two official languages. The East African Community's own profile of Tanzania describes Kiswahili and English as Tanzania's official languages. Uganda's constitution makes English the official language of Uganda and gives Kiswahili the status of a second official language, to be used in such circumstances as Parliament may prescribe by law. In Rwanda, a separate organic law establishes Kiswahili as an official language, alongside Kinyarwanda, English and French. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, French alone is named as the official language in the constitution; Kikongo, Lingala, Kiswahili and Tshiluba are instead named national languages, whose promotion the State commits to assure.

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Script & pronunciation

Swahili is written in the Latin alphabet. Today's standard romanized spelling developed from a practical orthography devised by Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century; before that, Swahili had long been written in Arabic script by Arabic-literate communities of the East African coast. A linguistic handbook of Swahili describes a one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes for most vowels and consonants, with digraphs used to write the remaining consonant sounds that have no single Roman letter of their own. This app's cards mark syllable breaks with hyphens instead of giving a separate phonetic transcription, as in Ta-fa-dha-li o-nye-sha pa-si-po-ti ya-ko for Tafadhali onyesha pasipoti yako ("Please show your passport"), where dh and sh are two such digraphs.

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Grammar essentials

Swahili nouns fall into a system of eighteen noun classes, each marked by a prefix on the noun itself; other words in the sentence agree with this class through matching prefixes, a process linguists call concord. In M-toto a-me-anguk-a ("The child has fallen"), the noun mtoto ("child") carries the class-1 prefix m-, and the verb agrees with it through the subject marker a-; in Ki-tabu ki-me-anguk-a ("The book has fallen"), the class-7 noun kitabu instead triggers the subject marker ki- on the verb. This app's own card for Chakula ni kitamu sana! ("The food is very delicious!") shows the same pattern with an adjective rather than a verb: chakula ("food") is a class-7 noun, so its adjective kitamu ("delicious") also takes the ki- prefix. Demonstratives agree with noun class as well: this app's card for Hii ("this one") explains that hii is the class-9 form, used by default for pointing at an unspecified thing, while a person takes huyu and a class-7 noun takes hiki, as in kitabu hiki ("this book"). Basic Swahili word order is subject–verb–object. Negation, too, is carried on the verb itself rather than by a separate word placed before or after it: this app's card for Gari halianzi ("The car won't start") breaks the verb down as ha- (negative) plus li-, the class-5 subject prefix agreeing with gari ("car"), plus the verb stem anza ("begin").

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Politeness & etiquette

Swahili marks respect for age and status through a fixed greeting exchange rather than through separate formal and informal words for "you". This app's card for Shikamoo, described as a respectful greeting to elders or higher-status people, explains the word as a contraction of "(mi)shika miguu yako" ("I hold your feet"), and notes that the expected reply is Marahaba. A study of greeting practices in Tanzania glosses the same exchange functionally: Shikamoo as "I greet you, who are older than myself," and the reply Marahaba as "I accept your greeting, younger one" — confirming that it is the younger or lower-status person who opens the exchange, and the elder who answers it.

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