SWAHILI
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ABOUT THE SWAHILI LANGUAGE
Swahili (also called Kiswahili; see below for derivation) is a Bantu language widely spoken in East Africa. Swahili is the mother tongue of the Swahili people who inhabit a 1500 km stretch of the East African coast from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. It is spoken by about 35 million people in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Congo, and parts of Zambia, Burundi Rwanda and Somalia, Swahili is an official language of Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya and is used as a lingua franca throughout East Africa and surrounding areas. It is the Sub-Saharan African language with the most speakers.
The name 'Kiswahili' comes from the plural of the Arabic word sahel sawahil meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used as an adjective to mean "coastal dwellers" or, by adding 'ki-' ["language"] to mean "coastal language"). The word "sahel" is also used for the border zone of the Sahara ("desert"). The incorporation of the final "i" is likely to be the nisba in Arabic (of the coast ), although some state it is for phonetic reasons. Swahili language contains a lot of vocabulary from Arabic, Persian, and Portuguese.
Countries/Areas where Swahili is spoken
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