Sahili

Sahili, commonly anglicized as Swahili and known in its own form as Kiswahili, is a Bantu language spoken by the Waswahili, the coastal peoples of East Africa, and by many inland communities. The name Swahili is thought to derive from Arabic Sawahil, meaning coasts. The language functions as a regional lingua franca across parts of East Africa and serves as a key medium of communication in education, media, and government in several countries.

Classification and linguistic features: Sahili is part of the Niger-Congo language family and exhibits the typical Bantu noun class system, with prefixes that mark classes and agreement on adjectives and verbs. Its verb morphology encodes tense, aspect, mood, voice, and subject agreement. The lexicon shows substantial Arabic influence due to long-standing trade and cultural exchange, along with loanwords from Persian, Portuguese, and later English and German.

Geographic distribution and status: It is the national language of Tanzania and one of the official languages of Kenya; it is widely spoken in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique. As a lingua franca, Sahili is used in education, mass media, administration, and everyday communication across the region.

Writing system and history: Modern Sahili is written primarily in the Latin alphabet. Historically, an Arabic script known as Ajami was used for religious and scholarly texts. The language developed from contact between Bantu speakers on the Swahili coast and Arab traders, with later standardization in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Dialects and standard form: Numerous regional varieties exist, particularly along the coast and inland, with Kiswahili representing the standardized form used in schooling and national media.