Talk:Swahili language
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[edit] OVERVIEW
"As in English, the proportion of loan words changes as the speaker is communicating at a "lower" or "higher class" situation. In English, a discussion of say, body functions, sounds much nicer if you use Latin-derived words with occasional French terms rather than Germanic-derived words (so-called four-letter words); an educated Swahili speaker will likewise use many more Arabic-derived words with English terms in polite circumstances, though the same phrase could usually be said in Swahili using only words of Bantu origin."
This is definitely a biased absurd generalization and should be removed. Considering the fact that English is a Germanic language makes this statement completely ridiculous.
[edit] Most widely spoken language in Africa?
The Article states that Swahili is the most widely spoken langauge in Africa with 50 million speakers. That is wrong, there at least twice as many native speakers of Arabic. I also suspect that there are also more speakers of French in West Africa. Somebody should fix that statement.
- In most of the second half of the last century, the most widely spoken indigenous language in non-Arabic Africa is Hausa, with over 25 million native speakers and a few million more second language speakers. But the combined population of Kenya and Tanzania is over 70 million, and the population of Uganda is about 26 million. Swahili is an official language in the first two and it was made a required grade school subject in Uganda within the last ten years. Not nearly everyone in Kenya and Tanzania speaks it; but in 20 years, if even 25 percent of those two countries speak it, and if the Ugandan mandate is observed, then Swahili will be head and shoulders beyond Hausa, Fulani, Igbo, and Yoruba. But it still will be spoken by just five to eight percent of non-Arabic Africans. Hurmata 07:05, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Number of speakers?
"It is spoken by over 50 million people[1], of whom there are approximately five million first-language speakers and thirty to fifty million second-language speakers[citation needed]" Huh?
- Native speakers: 800,000, not five million. Since 1960, a mystique has grown up around this one language. Hurmata 07:05, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Diphthongs
In the -vowels- sections it was said that in Swahili there are no vowels. What is it then, the -wa- in Swahili???
I've arranged it talking about semivowels. Please, someone with a better knowledge than me, look at it and improve it, specially the IPA symbols that I've copied form another page but that I cannot see at all. --81.38.172.141 11:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
I know nothing about Swahili, but with a good Phonetics background I'd say the part about no diphthongs in Swahili should be deleted and that it should perhaps say that diphthongs are only formed with the approximants /j/ and /w/ or something like that.--Coyne025 04:38, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
- The article says Swahili has no diphthongs and then about three lines later Swahili has also two semivowels ... used to make diphthongs. Diphthong can have subtlely different meanings, but consistency would be good! Peter Grey 19:43, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Ki-
I think that we should move the article to 'Kiswahili' not only for preserving the language's native name, but for consistency. We keep the ki- on both Kinyarwanda and Kirundi. Why not here? --Ionius Mundus 01:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- This is a matter of habit. Kiswahili is the name in Swahili or Kiswahili if you prefer. Some linguist prefer it to Swahili as to differentiate between Swahili (the people) and Kiswahili (the language), although this is useful I don't think this is necessary. Should we have Français and langue française? I think appending the term language is more than enough, and would be redundant if we had the ki- prefix. As for consistency with Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, it's irrelevant. Many bantu languages have a ki- prefix but many don't or have another prefix. Should we have kingala, kitetela, kiluba, kizulu or isiZulu, etc. I personally prefer the usage without language specific prefixes, but I cannot generalize this. --moyogo 08:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
- We've been gone through this many times before (see above, and the archived talk). Basically, the argument for keeping it at Swahili language is that the MoS prescribes use of the most common terms in article names; and arguably in English, Swahili is more common than Kiswahili. Additionally, the MoS registers a preference for English terms (where available) above terms in other languages, and Swahili is the English term for what in Swahili is called Kiswahili (are you with me?). Those two points also account for things like Yoruba being located at Yoruba language and not at Yorùbá language and Zulu being located at Zulu language and not isiZulu. This applies to some of Moyogo's examples too. Lingala, of which the li- part is usually analyzed as the li- noun class prefix, is located at Lingala language simply because Lingala is the most common name in the English literature. — mark ✎ 11:30, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
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- There's a long article explaining why the word is "Swahili" when speaking in English at this page on the Internet Living Swahili Dictionary. Lakini ukisoma Wikipedia kwa Kiswahili, jina la makala kuhusu lugha ya Waswahili ni "Kiswahili," na makala kuhusu lugha kutoka Uingereza ni "Kiingereza," siyo "English." Malangali 11:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
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- On second thought, I do think that it is redundant to say 'Kiswahili language', but I still prefer 'Kiswahili'. But it seems that this has already been throughly discussed and opposed. --Ionius Mundus 15:14, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
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- I agree that Swahili and other Bantu language names are best anglicized by dropping the noun class prefix. The same standard should also be applied to the 'dialect' names listed in this article; e.g. "Unguja (Kiunguja)" instead of "Kiunguja". Zahir Mgeni 14:57, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Swahili literature and poetry
(Crossposted from the Africa-related regional noticeboard) I just discovered that we have practically nothing on Swahili literature and poetry. Babbage alerted me to his creation of Utendi wa Tambuka, one of the earliest known literary works in Swahili (1728), and upon expanding it a little I noticed that we didn't even have categories like Category:Swahili poetry and Category:Swahili literature (I have since created the first). Is there anyone else who feels like creating at least some stubs on Swahili literature? As a small start, I wrote utenzi. Asante sana! — mark ✎ 12:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
On a sidenote, Knappert (1982) describes four genres: the tale (ngano), the song (wimbo), the epic (utenzi), and the proverb (mathali). — mark ✎ 13:22, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Swahili and Sanskrit
The Swahili word for "Lion" is "Simba",
the word for "Lion" in ancient Sanskrit is "Simha".
Interesting!
Are there any older sources (books, oral records) for Swahili that can be compared with Sanskrit?
- You might want to check out false cognate. — mark ✎ 22:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I just did...but that doesn't apply here since the Swahili language is described on this page as having influences from India.
- It does, since an Indian origin is effectively ruled out by the fact that cognates are found throughout the Bantu language family (see Bantu Lexical Reconstructions I-III). — mark ✎ 20:18, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] kiSwahili in the African Union
Is it possible to provide some clarification and reference for the status of kiSwahili in the African Union? In Languages of the African Union it is mentioned as an official language, separately from the other African languages. It seems that there was an effort to promote the language in the "OAU 1st Conference of African Ministers of Culture 1986, Port-Lous Mauritius. (...) This conference adopted two important documents: (...) Resolution N° 16 on the adoption of Kiswahili as an OAU working language. (...) Unfortunately: * the resolution on the use of kiswahili has never been implemented by the OAU, nor by any other African intergovernmental organization;" [1]. Probably, we have to distinguish between what is going on in paper and in practice. In paper, all African languages (kiSwahili included) and Arabic, English, French and Portuguese are working languages. In practice, only Arabic, English, French and Portuguese are working languages - see for example the languages available in the official site of the AU. So, it seems there was an effort to do the same for Kiswahili, but in vain. How can we have a straightforward account of this subject? --Michkalas 22:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] does BAKITA regulate Swahili?
Is it really correct to say that BAKITA is in charge of "regulating" the Swahili language? I've always thought the council was formed to promote and try to standardize the language, but not to act as some sort of arbitrating body that regulates what is and isn't Kiswahili Sanifu. Malangali 20:18, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Appropriate illustrations
I've changed the caption to the picture of the Lord's Prayer that was added to this article, and also moved it from the section on noun classes (!). However, I think it should be replaced with an image that is both clearer and more relevant. It would be nice, for example, to show an old Swahili text in Arabic script. Zahir Mgeni 20:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Revisions of January 2006
This article needs a thorough rewrite. Linguistically, it has numerous false statements. Some of its sources are popular encyclopedias that "haven't done their homework". It seems to have quoted liberally from several university Web sites without attribution (e.g., the Language Resource Center at Columbia University), and they too seem not to have done their homework, with their talk of the "Sabaki subgroup" and other remarks. The article's tone is consistently boosterish, naively enthusiastic.
One deleted passage ran, approximately, "Swahili is NOT largely a blend of non-Bantu languages. In fact, the proportion of loanwords in Swahili is only about as high as the proportion of Latin, French, Greek, etc. in English". This writer clearly didn't realize that the combined percentage of Latin, French, and Greek loanwords in English is at least 65 percent!
There needs to be an entire section added on the history of how the British colonialists created the widespread use of the language of a tribe constituting not quite one percent of the combined population of Kenya and Tanzania. Hurmata 07:05, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] "Poopie sticks"
In the OVERVIEW section lies: Overview
"Swahilian, poopie sticks, spoken natively by a tiny, politically insignificant ethnicity". Is this at all necessary? --Apathy 21:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
