Swahili

How trade and colonial rule spread Swahili

Arab traders on the coast used Swahili for commerce and for teaching Islam, and it was first written in Arabic script. Contact with the Portuguese added more words. After the Berlin Conference the Germans found the language already widespread in their East African territory, made it the language of schools and switched its alphabet from Arabic to Latin, which is why a school is shule, from German Schule. Britain took over German East Africa after the First World War and promoted Swahili across the region. At a conference in Mombasa in June 1928, representatives of Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda and Zanzibar chose the Zanzibar dialect as standard Swahili and adopted a standard spelling.

Who decides what standard Swahili is

Tanzania took Swahili as the language to unify the country after Tanganyika's independence in 1961, and primary schools teach in it before secondary schools switch to English. Its Baraza la Kiswahili la Taifa, BAKITA, formed in 1970, is the only body that can approve new vocabulary. Kenya made Swahili its national language in 1964 and an official language in 2010, and teaches it as a compulsory subject. Uganda made it official beside English in 2022. The East African Kiswahili Commission began work in 2015, and the United Nations declared 7 July Swahili Language Day in 2022.

What became of the Arabic script

Swahili was long written in Ajami, an Arabic script, and much of its literature is in it. German East Africa suppressed that script and British East Africa did so to a lesser degree, yet rural literacy in Arabic script stayed relatively high into the 1930s and 1940s. Scribes had been adapting the script to Swahili sounds since the later 19th century, beginning with Mwalimu Sikujua of Mombasa. The Latin alphabet used now has the digraphs ch, sh, ng' and ny and no q or x.