Why do so many people learn Swahili? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Why do so many people learn Swahili?
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a3
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Message 1 of 12

07 February 2012 at 9:09am | IP Logged

According to wikipedia, Swahili has 800 thousand native speakers, but 40 millions(!) speaking it as a second language. What has caused its popularity?
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nway
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Message 2 of 12

07 February 2012 at 9:20am | IP Logged

If 40 million of my neighbors spoke it as a second language, I'd want to learn it too...
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Quique
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Message 3 of 12

07 February 2012 at 9:43am | IP Logged

Kiswahili is used as a lingua franca in much of East Africa, and an official language in five countries.

Why Kiswahili and not any other language of the area? I don't know, probably historical reasons.
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Ari
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Message 4 of 12

07 February 2012 at 9:46am | IP Logged

It's the lingua franca of a large portion of eastern africa. Within an area where dozens of languages are being spoken, you need a common language that most people learn, because it's unfeasible that everyone learns everyone else's language. Swahili has become that language that everyone learns. It's sort of like how a speaker of Swedish and a speaker of Polish will speak English to each other.
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strikingstar
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Message 5 of 12

07 February 2012 at 1:56pm | IP Logged

I feel compelled to respond in this thread. 800K native speakers? I'm assuming this
only refers to the coastal Swahili peoples - the original Waswahili. There are many
ethnic groups/tribes in Tanzania - Chagga, Sukuma, Haya, Nyamwezi, Maasai etc. There
also many tribes in Kenya - Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya etc. (I'm less familiar with Kenya. But
that's gonna change really really soon!!) All these tribes have their own native
language. (My first week in Tz, I had an epic fail when I tried conversing with an
elderly lady in Swahili. She was Chagga and didn't understand Swahili. But I digress.)
However, most East Africans can speak Swahili. How did this come to pass......???

I'm gonna quote something I wrote a while back. This post is from the French in Africa
thread found here.
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=29962&PN=1&TPN=12
(Couldn't get the link to work.)

myself wrote:

The status of Swahili has been put on a pedestal. As nordantill
mentioned, the difference between East Africa and West Africa is that the French tried
to impose their language on their colonies while the Germans/British used (what they
deemed) the most widespread local language as the language of administration. The wiki
section on the "Rise of Swahili" notes that although widespread, Swahili's
dissemination was also shallow.

Now how did Swahili become the most widespread? Here is my very abridged account of
history. Well it started in the 17th century. East Africa requested Omani assistance in
driving away the Portuguese. The Omanis responded and after driving out the Portuguese,
they took a liking to Zanzibar and decided to stay for good. Over time, more Omanis
moved from Oman to Zanzibar and the royal family eventually split, with one sultanate
in Muscat and another in Zanzibar. The Omanis (and to a smaller extent, the Indians)
turned Zanzibar into an important trading post along the East African coastline,
specializing particularly in the trade of slaves, spices (cloves) and ivory. This
necessitated contact and communication with the mainland and the closest people to the
mainland were of course the coastal Swahili-speaking peoples. Swahili became the
language of commerce (and hence prestige) and as trade continued to grow, it began to
expand both upwards towards Mombasa and downwards towards Northern Mozambique. When the
Europeans took over, they saw that Swahili was already the language of commerce and
that even the royal family (at Zanzibar) spoke Swahili. They had no reason to
contravene this policy for that would only disrupt trade. Swahili rose to its position
of prestige and prominence because of trade, patronage by both the royalty and the
colonial powers as well as policies favorable towards it. When Tanzania gained its
independence in the 60s, most everyone understood Swahili and thus enabled it to become
a unifying language. Also importantly, it had already established regional significance
because of its pervasiveness in Kenya and Uganda and to a lesser extent, Rwanda,
Burundi, DRC and Mozambique. I'm not as well-read about West Africa but I haven't seen
any situation in West Africa that parallels the East African experience.

For a local language to become the official language, it has to have an immediate
benefit to the greater population (access to trade in Swahili's case) as well as the
backing of the administration (Omanis/Germans/British in Swahili's case). And for a
language to gain official status, it needs to be supported by favorable policies at the
administrative level. But bear in mind that government policies today are much more
easily overturned than royal decrees or colonial mandates. And lest we forget, Swahili
gained prominence and acceptance long before Tanzania/Kenya gained independence. The
significance of this is that Swahili wasn't consciously adopted by a nation that
aspired towards any grandiose goals of having a unifying language. There was no nation
of Tanzania then. It was a specific set of circumstances that allowed Swahili to
permeate society, allowing it to become an obvious choice following nationhood.
Contrast that with achieving nationhood before having an established national language,
with no one language having permeated society to any significant extent (especially in
the case of countries without any overwhelming ethnic majority).

But if you think that everyone is hunky dory with Swahili even in East Africa, you are
sorely mistaken. There has been a longstanding debate in Uganda regarding Swahili.
Afterall, Swahili is nobody's native language in Uganda. Many Ugandans view Swahili
negatively, i.e. the language of oppression, the language of the slave-masters and the
language of the LDU militias. Interestingly, let it also be known that the only
indigenous contender for official language (Luganda) was soundly thrashed by the
greater population. Let this be stated again. Luganda, the most widely spoken local
language (39% vs 35% Swahili) was soundly rejected by the greater population
because of a fear of Baganda hegemony. They would rather recognize English as an
official language than embrace Luganda as one.

Long story short/TL;DR - Omanis, trade, colonization.

Edited by strikingstar on 07 February 2012 at 2:04pm
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dm
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Message 6 of 12

31 March 2012 at 11:15am | IP Logged

You pretty much nailed it Strikingstar, although I would disagree with you slightly on your last point about the
acceptance of Swahili in Uganda. Attitudes are changing very quickly in Uganda with regard to Swahili. It is now an
official language of Uganda and is gaining administrative support throughout the country. It is now required study
in many of the country's primary and secondary schools. With the deepening integration of the East African
Community, it is likely that Swahili will continue to gain acceptance throughout Uganda and also in Rwanda. Here is
an excellent article about Swahili in Uganda http://www.njas.helsinki.fi/pdf-files/vol15num2/mukuthuria.p df.

On a personal note, I have lived and travelled in Kenya and Tanzania on several occasions and I highly recommend
learning Swahili for anyone that wants to visit the region. The film and music industry is exploding throughout the
region and the language of choice is almost always Swahili. I have learned a little Swahili and I am hoping to
eventually become fluent. ;
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Medulin
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Message 7 of 12

31 March 2012 at 6:18pm | IP Logged

My favorite off-shoot of Swahili is KiMwani, spoken in Northern Mozambique:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mwani_language

''Kimwani of northern Mozambique appears to be the result of imperfect shift towards Swahili several centuries ago by speakers of Makonde.'

Edited by Medulin on 31 March 2012 at 6:19pm
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fiziwig
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Message 8 of 12

31 March 2012 at 7:16pm | IP Logged

My interest in Swahili, although I haven't actually started learning it yet, is because I thinks is it a very beautiful sounding language. Much more pleasant on the ears than most other languages. It gets my vote for most beautiful language.

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