Bravanese dialect

Bravanese, also called Chimwiini (ChiMwini, Mwiini, Mwini) or Chimbalazi,^[3] is a related to Swahili spoken by the Bravanese people, who are the predominant inhabitants of Barawa or Brava, in Somalia.^[4] Maho (2009) considers it a distinct dialect, and it has been classified as a Northern Dialect of Swahili.^[5] However, it strongly distinguishes itself from standard Swahili under all linguistic considerations.^[6]

Bravanese
Mwiini
Chimwiini
Native to	Somalia
Region	Barawa
Ethnicity	Bravanese
Native speakers	(40,000 cited 1992)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Northeast Coast Bantu Sabaki Swahili Bravanese
Language codes
ISO 639-3	(included in Kiswahili [swh])
Glottolog	chim1312
Guthrie code	G.412[2]
ELP	Mwini

Due to the ongoing Somali Civil War, most speakers have left the region and are scattered throughout the world in ex-refugee immigrant communities in places such as Columbus and Atlanta in the United States, London and Manchester in the United Kingdom, and Mombasa, Kenya. It has fewer than 15,000 speakers.^[7]

Bravanese may have once served as a regional lingua franca due to the key coastal location of Barawa. One piece of linguistic evidence for this comes from morphological reduction. For example, it has a three-way tense system, which is simpler than that of neighboring Bantu dialects historically spoken in Somalia.^[5]

See also

• Bravanese people