A Bantu language born from East African Indian Ocean trade — official in five countries and the lingua franca for over 200 million people across the African Great Lakes region.
Where it’s spoken
Swahili (Kiswahili) is the official language of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, and a recognized national language in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It functions as a lingua franca across the African Great Lakes region, with over 200 million speakers when second-language use is counted. The African Union adopted Swahili as one of its official languages in 2004.
What it sounds like
Swahili has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) cleanly distinguished, no phonemic tones, and prenasalized consonants like mb-, nd-, ng-, and nj-. Stress almost always falls on the penultimate syllable. Many consonants are direct loans from Arabic. The language has 16 noun classes — each with prefixes for singular and plural — that govern agreement throughout the sentence.
How it’s written
Modern Swahili uses the Latin alphabet. Historically it was written in Arabic script (Ajami) for at least a thousand years, especially for Islamic religious texts and Swahili poetry like utenzi epics. Latin script became standard in the 20th century.
History
Swahili formed on the East African coast as Bantu speakers integrated Arab, Persian, and Indian trading communities. Its Indian Ocean Swahili Coast city-states — Kilwa, Mombasa, Zanzibar, Lamu — used the language for over a millennium of trade.
Find more languages by letter
Swahili starts with S and ends with I. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Swahili":