Learn Swahili
Swahili, or Kiswahili, is a national language of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and the DRC, and is also spoken as a lingua franca across East Africa. People who speak it as a second language vastly outnumber those who speak it as a native language. Swahili is part of the Bantu language family, meaning it shares characteristics with languages such as Zulu, Kinyarwanda and Lingala, but its vocabulary has been strongly influenced by Arabic - even the name ‘Swahili’ comes from Arabic. Swahili has many dialects: the standard variant, Kiunguja, is based on the dialect of Zanzibar Town.
Learn Swahili with uTalk
Where is it spoken?
Tanzania
Kenya
Uganda
Show moreDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Rwanda
Burundi
Somalia
Zambia
Malawi
Number of speakers
80,000,000
Language family
Niger-Congo
Atlantic-Congo
Benue-Congo
Bantu
Fun facts — Swahili
Swahili borrows a lot of words from Arabic, such as dakika for minute, saa for hour and tafadhali for (please.
Forming a question is easy: you can just add 'je' to the front of the sentence.
The greeting 'habari' means 'news'- from 'what's your news?'
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