A Select Bibliography

Kiswahili, a phonetic Bantu language, is fast gaining currency across the Africa continent. Its status as a lingua franca became clear when it became the first African language to be adopted as a 'working language' by the African Union. Although it began in Eastern Africa, Kiswahili is taught and spoken as far away as Ghana and South Africa. As of mid-2018, Kiswahili was the third most spoken language in Africa, after English and Arabic. This research traces and confirms Kiswahili's dominant status on the continent. It also gives valuable insights into Kiswahili Literature, covering the history, categories, classic works, and literary giants of this growing genre.

Swahili Forum, 2014

Tydskrif vir Letterkunde, 2018

Modern Swahili: the integration of Arabic culture into Swahili literature Due to her geographical position, the African continent has for many centuries hosted visitors from other continents such as Asia and Europe. Such visitors came to Africa as explorers, missionaries, traders and colonialists. Over the years, the continent has played host to the Chinese, Portuguese, Persians, Indians, Arabs and Europeans. Arabs have had a particularly long history of interaction with East African people, and have therefore made a significant contribution to the development of the Swahili language. Swahili is an African native language of Bantu origin which had been in existence before the arrival of Arabs in East Africa. The long period of interaction between Arabs and the locals led to linguistic borrowing mainly from Arabic to Swahili. The presence of loanwords in Swahili is evidence of cultural interaction between the Swahili and Arabic people. The Arabic words are borrowed from diverse registers of the language. Hence, Swahili literature is loaded with Arabic cultural aspects through Arabic loanwords. Many literary works are examples of Swahili literature that contains such words. As a result, there is evidence of Swahili integrating Arabic culture in its literature, an aspect that this paper seeks to highlight.

The Swahili World, 2018

From modest beginnings as the speech of a small group of mixed farmers, Swahili has become the lingua franca of millions of people in Eastern Africa and beyond (Lewis et al. 2015). How did this extraordinary transformation begin? This chapter outlines what is known (and not known) about the origins and initial development of the Swahili language and its dialects, and what this tells us in turn about the history of its speakers. It is based largely on research in historical and comparative linguistics undertaken since the 1970s and continuing through to the present. The potential contribution of research of this kind to understandings of the African past is well established (Nurse 1997; Blench 2006), and the Swahili-speaking world has already been the subject of important studies (including Nurse and Spear 1985; Nurse and Hinnebusch 1993). Needless to say, this work is neither exhaustive nor unproblematic. As we shall see, many gaps in our knowledge remain, while current research suggests that major revisions might be made to existing reconstructions of Swahili linguistic and cultural history.

American Anthropologist, 1986

Page 1. Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800-1500 DEREK NURSE and THOMAS SPEAR Page 2. Page 3. THE SWAHILI Thi. s One 99J9-A7C-FAAG Page 4. Ethnohistory Series Series Editors ...

Lugha na Fasihi : Scritti in onore e memoria di/Essays in honour and memory of Elena Bertoncini Zúbková. Edited by Flavia Aiello & Roberto Gaudioso. Napoli : UniorPress, 2019

2019

This paper considers some of the questions posed by literary translations both from and into Swahili. While the questions a translator might address as she proceeds with each translation may be the same, their differing answers often highlight the translator’s different position towards, and history with, each target language, as well as her aesthetic and political commitments in each. The projects discussed are Mlenge Fanuel Mgendi’s comic short story Starehe gharama (Comfort is Expensive) about a young schoolboy’s misadventure on a daladala bus in Dar es Salaam and Tope Folarin’s Caine Prize shortlisted story Genesis (Mwanzo), in which two Nigerian boys living in the American Midwest witness their mother’s struggle with her new surroundings

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 1983

culture. What follows is an hypothesis about the origins of the Swahili language. Since Swahili is a Bantu language, its roots are to be sought in Africa, not the Islamic homelands. Hence reference to external influence is minimised in this study. Coastal people, being Muslims, would object that a language cannot be so crudely separated from the culture of the community carrying the language. To this we would answer that the culture of any community may now be rather different from that of the linguistic ancestors of the community. Both language and culture are modified over the centuries. What we are interested in here is primarily linguistic evidence for certain aspects of the language and culture of the early Swahili community before it was touched in a major way by extra-African influences. A Swahili is here defined linguistically,2 as a speaker of one of the primary dialects of Swahili, namely, from north to south: i. Northern dialects (ND): Miini (spoken at Barawa, on the Somali coast, also known as (ki)Barawa, (chi)Mwiini, (chi)Mbalazi); Bajuni (spoken on the southern Somali and northern Kenya coast: also known as (ki)T'ik'uu, (ki)Gunya); Siu; Pate; Amu (also known as (ki)Lamu). 2. The dialects of the Mombasa area, including minor dialects such as Jomvu/Ngare and Chifundi (southern Kenya coast). The Mombasa dialects are an early offshoot of ND, with some later SD overlay. 3. Southern dialects (SD): Vumba, Mtang'ata (northern Tanzania coast); Pemba; Mafia; Makunduchi-Hadimu; Tumbatu (the last two on Zanzibar Island); the speech of most of-the minor Tanzania offshore islands; Mgao (southern Tanzania and northern Mozambique coast); Mwani (northern Mozambique). 4. Unguja (Zanzibar town and island, adjoining mainland: the basis for Standard Swahili). Unguja is an SD with an ND overlay. Any attempt at explaining Swahili history must note first that all traditions of Swahili migration, since the earliest coherent records, involve movements from north to south. Apart from very localised phenomena, there are no traditions of major movement from south to north. Many of these accounts of movement start x. The original draft of this study arose as an attempt to find linguistic correlates for the archaeological data presented in the paper by T.H. Wilson (1982), to whom it owed its initial inspiration. It has benefitted from comments from H.

In the 1960s, much diatribe was exchanged by African literary artists within their caucus, and outside with different scholars interested in African literature. Wali demonstrates this disagreement. He comments, " … until these writers and their western midwives accept the fact that true African literature must be written in African languages, they would be merely pursuing a dead end, which can only lead to sterility, uncertainty, and frustration. " In reply to Wali, Achebe expresses, " …you cannot cram African literature in a small, neat definition. I do not see African literature as one unit but as associated units – in fact, the sum total of all the national and ethnic literatures of Africa ". The disagreement is no longer conspicuous. However, the question that demands an answer is, " Have African languages become productive in African literature? " This paper argues that they have not, maybe, yet. It assesses this situation, providing factors responsible. One of such factors is the non-development and underdevelopment of the African languages. Besides, the paper makes recommendations that can salvage the situation; one of which is instituting awards for literary works in African languages.