Swahili

About Swahili

Swahili (Kiswahili), is an official language of Tanzania, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda. Swahili speakers can also be found in surrounding countries, such as Burundi, Rwanda, and Mozambique. While Swahili is primarily spoken natively along the coast and islands of Kenya and Tanzania, it is the lingua franca across all of Tanzania, most of Kenya, eastern DRC, and some parts of Uganda, making it the most widely spoken African language in the world. As a part of the Bantu language family, Swahili is related to a variety of languages from Southern Africa to Central to West Africa. While the vast majority of Bantu languages are tonal, and a few like Xhosa and Zulu also incorporate clicks into their phonetics, Swahili does not use clicks or tones, so pronunciation is generally not difficult for English speakers.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.