(4) What kind of language is Kiswahili?

Grammatically, Swahili belongs to the "Bantu language family". Bantu languages cover East and Central AfricaCentral AfricaAs far as Kiswahili is concerned,

Central Africa is: Rwanda,

Burundi and DR Congo.

Politically, Central Africa

also includes:

Central African Republic,

Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville. as well as southern Africa (except Namibia). The lexis and the grammar are based upon these languages. However, a lot of words have been adapted especially from Arabic and English. Others originated from Portuguese, German, Hindi, Persian etc.

As is the case with all Bantu languages, a lot of specific vocabulary in the fields of science, technology, politics, psychology etc does not have vernacular equivalents. But because Kiswahili is also used as a medium of instruction in many Tanzanian schools, there was a need for such vocabulary to be formulated. Thus the Institute of Swahili Research (known by its Swahili acronym as TUKI ) at the University of Dar-es-Salaam, and the National Swahili Council (known as BAKITA by its Swahili abbreviation) were launched in Tanzania. The former is involved in neologism (i.e. coining new vocabulary) and the latter in standardizing it for the general public. Later on, TUKI was superseded by TATAKI , the Institute of Kiswahili Studies.

There are various sources of neologisms (i.e. new words). To start with, TATAKI checks whether a missing Swahili word does have a semantic equivalent in any of the vernacular languages. If not then the Institute adopts and then adapts an English (or sometimes Arabic or Latin) term. However, artificial words which do not originate from any other language are occasionally coined. This makes Swahili the most dynamic African language which is evolving constantly to cater for the needs of a changing world. So it is quite a challenge even for native speakers to keep abreast of all the new developments!