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Swahili

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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See also: swahili

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
Swahili edition of Wiktionary

Etymology

Borrowed from Swahili swahili, from Arabic سَوَاحِلِيّ (sawāḥiliyy, “(people) of the coasts”), from سَوَاحِل (sawāḥil, “coasts”), broken plural of سَاحِل (sāḥil, “coast”).

Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA(key): /swəˈhiːli/
  • (US) IPA(key): /swɑˈhili/, /swəˈhili/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • Rhymes: -hiːli

Proper noun

Swahili

  1. An agglutinative language of the Bantu branch widely spoken in East Africa. Born in its modern form from the hybridization of the Arabic and Bantu cultures, it was the language of the traders in East Africa, and spread along the routes of trade.
    • 1983 December 30, Ron Alexander, “The Evening Hours”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN, archived from the original on 3 January 2022, page B7:
      On Tuesday night at the Club Serene in Brooklyn, Mayor Koch proclaimed Kwanzaa Week in New York. Then he told the crowd of about 400 that he had practiced his Swahili in order to pronounce correctly such exotic-sounding words as kujichagulia (self-determination), ujamaa (cooperative economics) and imani (faith), the theme of Kwanzaa '83.
    • 2021 April 25, John Malathronas, “Which languages are easiest – and most difficult – for native English speakers to learn?”, in CNN‎, archived from the original on 22 March 2022:
      Similarly, Swahili evolved as the trading language in East Africa and is described as having an Arab vocabulary upon an African grammar.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

Swahili (plural Swahilis or Swahili)

  1. A member of various ethnic groups — mainly Bantu, Afro-Arab and Comorian — inhabiting the Swahili coast.
    Synonym: (plural) Waswahili
    • 2000, Arye Oded, Islam and Politics in Kenya, page 12:
      The Swahilis are a unique and important community that began to form before the arrival of Islam, as a result of intermarriage between Arab traders who came to the coast and women from local ethnic groups.
    • 2017, Derek Nurse, Thomas Spear, The Swahili, page 29:
      The final sources for the early history of the Swahili are the oral traditions related by them about their own past.

See also

Further reading

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Dutch

Dutch Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia nl

Etymology

Borrowed from English Swahili.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˌsʋaːˈɦi.li/
  • Audio:(file)
  • Hyphenation: Swa‧hi‧li
  • Rhymes: -ili

Proper noun

Swahili n

  1. Swahili (language)

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