Swahili

Bantu lingua franca of East Africa, salted with Arabic by a thousand years of ocean trade.

Core Principles & Analysis

• Counting second-language speakers it reaches on the order of two hundred million users.
• Its Arabic loan layer — including the name Swahili, "of the coast" — records Indian Ocean commerce.
• The African Union adopted it as a working language, and UNESCO gave it a world day, July 7.

Specifications & Metrics

• FAMILY: Niger-Congo (Bantu)