Linguistics 203 – Languages of the World Swahili General Notes
Linguistics 203 – Languages of the World Swahili
General Notes belongs to the Benue-Congo branch of the Bantu language family approximately 787,630 native speakers, mostly along the coast official language in Tanzania and Kenya Tanzania has largest number of native speakers, at 350,000. Kenya has 130,000. Young people are increasingly speaking Swahili over their ancestral languages (Comrie et al. 2003) also functions as lingua franca spoken by about 50,000,000 nonnative speakers (Lyovin 1997) also called kiswahili (ki = ‘language’, swahili = ‘coast’)
Location
Swahili
(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language)
Linguistics 203 – Languages of the World Swahili
Banta language family (+ other African language families)
(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:African_language_families_en.svg)
Phonetics/Phonology voiced stops are generally realized as implosives (implosives are rare in the world’s languages) o I do not have examples of implosives from Swahili, but you can listen to the same implosives (i.e. [ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ]) by doing the following: i. Go to: http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/handbook_downloads.htm ii. Download the Sindhi.zip file iii. The following sound files contain the implosives listed as the initial sound: [ɓ] = 05-child.wav [ɗ] = 21-crevice.wav [ʄ] = 14-cobweb.wav [ɠ] = 33-heavy.wav
exhibits vowel harmony, whereby certain verb suffixes appear with high vowel [i] after high vowels [i u] or the low vowel [a], and with the mid vowel [e] after mid vowels [e o]
non-mid harmony mid harmony pig-ia end-ea fund-isha end-esha
Linguistics 203 – Languages of the World Swahili
Syntax/Morphology nouns belong to various classes (similar to ‘gender’, but often less arbitrary) class (very) general semantic field prefix examples 1 (sg) i) people m(w)- m-tu ‘person’ ii) words: m-dudu ‘insect’ + m-nyama m-walimu ‘teacher’ 2 (pl) ‘animal’ w(a)- wa-tu ‘people’ w-ana ‘children’ 3 (sg) i) trees, plants (excluding fruits) m(w)- m-kono ‘arm’ ii) products made from wood m-witu ‘forest’ 4 (pl) iii) some natural phenomena mi- mi-ti ‘trees’ iv) some parts of the body mi-paka ‘boundaries’ 5 (sg) i) augmentatives i) ji- ji-tu ‘giant’ ii) round objects ii) j(i)-, ∅- ji-we ‘stone’ 6 (pl i) ma-ji- ma-ji-tu ‘giants’ / n.c.) Class 6 only: ii, iii) ma- ma-we ‘stones’, ‘stone’ (material) iii) liquids 7 (sg) i) inanimate objects i, ii) ki- ki-tabu ‘book’ ii) diminutives Ki-Swahili ‘ Swahili language’ ki-toto ‘baby’ 8 (pl) Class 8 only: i, ii, iii) vi- vi-zuri ‘well’ < -zuri ‘good, beautiful’ iii) makes adverbs from nouns vi-su ‘knives’ 9 (sg) i) family names N- (m-, n- N-goma imepasuka. ‘The drum is split.’ ii) animal/insect names (agreement and ∅-) N-g’ombe amekufa. ‘The cow is dead.’ 10 (pl) morphology comes from NC1-2) N- (m-, n- N-goma zimepasuka. ‘The drums are split.’ iii) some fruits and ∅-) N-g’ombe wamekufa. ‘The cows are dead.’ iv) loanwords
Class 10 only: vi) plural of class (11) vii) plural of class (5) taking ∅- prefix 11 (sg) i) abstract nouns from other parts of speech u-/w- u-zuri ‘beauty’ < zuri ‘beautiful’ NC11 ii) substances denoting collections of small u-dongo ‘soil’ (includes things (like mass nouns) u-nga ‘flour’ old iii) single objects from a group of such objects u-zi ‘thread’ NC14) iv) long/elongated objects u-pepo ‘wind’ v) some natural phenomena U-Ingereza ‘England’ vi) some country names (but these take NC9 agreement) 12 nouns derived from verbs ku-/kw- ku-soma ‘to read, reading’ NC15 ku-piga ‘to beat, beating’ 13 i) the word mahali ‘place’ (prefix does not pa- mahali pa-moja NC16 occur on mahali, but on agreeing words) place NC16-one ii) agreement with nouns that have locative ‘one place’ suffix -ni; means position on a surface or proximity 14 agreement with nouns that have locative ku-/kw- Ni-na-enda shamba-ni kw-angu NC17 suffix -ni; means goal of movement, distance I-PR.PRG-go field-LOC NC17-my and location when exact whereabouts are ‘I am going to my field.’ unkown 15 agreement with nouns that have locative mu-/mw- Tuliingia mipakani mwa Uganda. NC18 suffix -ni; means location within something ‘We entered the borders of Uganda.’ n.c. = noncount; PR = present; PRG = progressive; NC = noun class
Linguistics 203 – Languages of the World Swahili
nouns must take NC-prefix to appear in a phrase (i.e. all nouns are bound morphemes) adjectives, numerals, demonstratives and sometimes verbs agree with nouns in class and number the agreement morphemes are sometimes but not always identical between the noun, adjective and verb
Wa-tu wa-zuri wa-wili wa-le wa-meanguka NC2-person NC2-good NCP-two NC2-that NC2-fell.down ‘Those two good people fell down.’
(below are examples from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language#Noun_classes) mtoto mmoja anasoma watoto wawili wanasoma child one is reading children two are reading One child is reading Two children are reading
kitabu kimoja kinatosha vitabu viwili vinatosha book one suffices books two suffice One book is enough Two books are enough
ndizi moja inatosha ndizi mbili zinatosha banana one suffices bananas two suffice One banana is enough Two bananas are enough
Some nouns belong to one class, but they take agreement from another class; e.g., animate beings not in NC1s or NC2p still agree with NC1s or NC2p
M-na vi-boko wa-kubwa mto-ni there.are.in NC8p-hippo NC2p-big river-LOC ‘There are large hippos in the river.’
SVO, although because of the verbal agreement, S and O may move around verbs show agreement with the subject and object
Ki-tabu wa-na-ki-soma wa-toto. NC7s-book NC2p-PRES.PROG.-NC7s-read NC2p-child ‘The children are reading the book.’
Resources BBC News in Swahili: http://www.bbc.co.uk/swahili/
References Comrie, Bernard, Stephen Matthew and Maria Polinsky (eds.) 2003. The Atlas of Languages. Revised Edition. Facts On File, Inc. New York.
Lyovin, Anatole. (1997). An Introduction to the Languages of the Word. New York: Oxford University Press.