{"id":2153,"date":"2022-02-17T10:11:36","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T10:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/?p=2153"},"modified":"2022-02-17T10:11:36","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T10:11:36","slug":"swahili-gradually-becoming-a-language-for-all-of-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/2153\/swahili-gradually-becoming-a-language-for-all-of-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Swahili gradually becoming a language for all of Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With more than 200 million speakers, Swahili, which originated in East Africa, is one of the world’s 10 most widely spoken languages and, as Priya Sippy writes, there is a renewed push for it to become the continent’s lingua franca.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“It’s high time we move from the coloniser’s language.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This is not part of a rousing speech by a pan-African idealist but rather the sentence is uttered quietly and calmly by Ghanaian Swahili student Annabel Naa Odarley Lankai.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But her words echo declarations by the continent’s visionaries down the decades.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Africa should “have something that is of us and for us”, the 23-year-old adds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In its heartland, Swahili and its dialects stretch from parts of Somalia down to Mozambique and across to the western parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But Ms Lankai’s classroom at the University of Ghana in the capital, Accra, is some 4,500km (2,800 miles) west of Swahili’s birthplace – coastal Kenya and Tanzania<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The distance could be seen as a measure of the spread of the language and its growing appeal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And Swahili words and phrases, transmitted through the music of stars such as Tanzania’s Diamond Platnumz, are now being more widely heard in Ghana, Ms Lankai says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite the language’s higher profile she remembers that her “friends and family were confused when they heard I was studying Swahili”. But in addition to her idealism, Ms Lankai thinks that knowledge of the language will help her get a job following graduation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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After the UN’s cultural organisation, Unesco, recently designated 7 July as a world day for the language, she may have a point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A Tanzanian journalist and medical doctor also launched MwanaSayansi<\/a>, the first science newspaper in Swahili. The aim is to bridge the gap between researchers and their audience and communicate science in a language that most people understand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Swahili, which takes around 40% of its vocabulary directly from Arabic, was initially spread by Arab traders along East Africa’s coast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was then formalised under the German and British colonial regimes in the region in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, as a language of administration and education.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And though it has been spoken about before as an alternative on the continent to English, French or Portuguese as a lingua franca, or as a commonly understood language, there is now a renewed impetus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Swahili & African Union<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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At its recent heads of state meeting, the African Union (AU) adopted Swahili as an official working language.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It is also the official language of the East African Community (EAC), which DR Congo is poised to join.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2019, Swahili became the only African language to be recognised by the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Shortly after, it was introduced in classrooms across South Africa and Botswana.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Most recently, Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa University announced it would start teaching Swahili.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Some linguists predict that Swahili’s reach in Africa will continue to expand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Tom Jelpke, a researcher of Swahili at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, argues that as connections grow across the continent, people will want a common way to communicate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He believes that its closeness to other languages in east and central Africa will cement its position there. But beyond those regions there may also be an ideological element.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Swahili\u2026 comes [with] a sense of ownership,” says Ally Khalfan, a lecturer at the State University of Zanzibar, echoing the views of Ms Lankai. “It is about our property and our identity as Africans.”<\/p>\n

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The idea of Swahili as a pan-African language was pushed in the 1960s by Tanzania’s first President Julius Nyerere, who used Swahili to unify his nation after independence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Despite this post-colonial vision and the current boosted status of Swahili there has to be a dose of realism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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European languages are still dominant throughout the continent – and it will take a big effort to shift that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Currently, English is the official or second language in 27 out of the 54 countries in Africa, and French is the official language in 21 of them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“English is still the language of power,” says Chege Githiora, a linguistics professor in Kenya, in recognition of the political and economic reality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He advocates what he calls “fluent multilingualism” where people are comfortable speaking more than one trans-national language.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But whereas Swahili has an appeal in east, central and southern Africa, it has more competition in the west and the north.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Arabic is dominant in the north, but in the west there are African languages – such as Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba – which could vie for the status of lingua franca.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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If Swahili is to become truly pan-African it will take political will, an economic imperative and financial investment to reach all regions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“When Swahili was first taught in Ghana in 1964 it got significant support from the University of Dar es Salaam, but this was not sustained,” says Dr Josephine Dzahene-Quarshie, a Swahili professor at the University of Ghana.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“If East Africa does more to promote the learning of Swahili in other regions we could get somewhere, but I don’t foresee it as a lingua franca for the whole continent.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nevertheless, her students in Accra, such as Ms Lankai, will carry on dreaming and learning as it holds both an idealistic and practical appeal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With more than 200 million speakers, Swahili, which originated in East Africa, is one of the world’s 10 most widely spoken languages and, as Priya Sippy writes, there is a renewed push for it to become the continent’s lingua franca. “It’s high time we move from the coloniser’s language.” This is not part of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":10,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"BBC","source_url":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-africa-60333796","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,29],"tags":[376,49,375],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-east-africa","tag-african-languages","tag-african-union","tag-swahili"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}