Swahili people

“ It was almost certainly of mainland origin, distinct from the original local dialects of Zanzibar and Pemba, which may have belonged to group No. 6. There are colonies of Swahili-speaking people at Mombasa, Malindi, Lamu, and even as far north as the Shebeli river in Somaliland, also along the coast of German and Portuguese East Africa as far south as Angoche. In the coast-lands between the Ruvu or Pangani river on the north and the Kilwa settlements on the south, the local languages and dialects are more or less related to Swahili, though they are independent languages. ”

“ SWAHILI (Wa-Swahili, i.e. coast people, from the Arabic sāhil, coast) , a term commonly applied to the inhabitants of Zanzibar and of the opposite mainland between the parallels of 2° and 9° S., who speak the Ki-Swahili language. ”

“ In such a climate one can understand how people come to lose count of time and forget how old they are.
As to the people, the basis of the whole are the mixed race, between Arab and Negro, whom we call Swahili. The history of the coast is merely that of a succession of Arab conquests. One tribe came down, conquered the negroes and then sunk into an effete state by mixing with the natives and adopting their customs. Then followed another tribe, conquered, intermarried, lost its energy, and made way for a fresh tribe of conquerors. ”

“ Nearly every Swahili town has some little difference in its talk, and even the various quarters of the town of Zanzibar have their varieties. Thus Kokoni is the home of a colony from Lamoo and Mombas who speak very good Swahili; Baghani was till lately inhabited by the Harthi Arabs, who spoke a very corrupt Arabized dialect; while the people of Ng'ambo, being chiefly freed slaves, have a twang and a dialect peculiar to themselves. ”

“ A very common means of earning a little money among the poorer classes of men in Zanzibar is by stitching or quilting patterns on the white linen scull caps which form the basis of a turban. This custom is referred to in the 'Indian Story' (p. 143) .
I am not sure whether the language in which Swahili poetry is written was ever generally understood. It certainly is not so now, and the story of Liongo turns upon the fact that it was not so in his time, though the drift of the particular verses about the files (p.443) would now I should suppose be clear enough to most people. ”

“ Kiswahili (Swahili) is the mother tongue of the Bantu people living in Zanzibar and nearby coastal Tanzania; although Kiswahili is Bantu in structure and origin, its vocabulary draws on a variety of sources, including Arabic and English, and it has become the lingua franca of central and eastern Africa; the first language of most people is one of the local languages Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write Kiswahili (Swahili) , English, or Arabic
total population: 78.2%
male: 85.9%
female: 70.7% (2003 est.) ”

“ Many different dialects are spoken by the Bantu tribes, Swahili being the most widely known (see Bantu Languages) . Their religion is the worship of spirits, ancestral and otherwise, accompanied by a vague and undefined belief in a Supreme Being, generally regarded as indifferent to the doings of the people.
The task of civilizing the natives is undertaken in various ways by the numerous Protestant and Roman Catholic missions established in the colony, and by the government. ”

“ The towns are ruled by headmen, who are subject to the Sultan of Zanzibar, but who enrich themselves by extortion. The Washenzi are day-laborers, and are barbarians from the interior. Banians are always found prospering in trade. The Ki-Swahili—which means people of the coast, degenerate Arabs—are ignorant and vicious. They have a great fear and hatred of the white man, particularly of the English, whom they called Beni Nar—Sons of Fire. They think that, if once the white man’s foot has been placed on the land, he is sure to obtain possession of it in the end ”

“ One’s ear soon grows familiar with the cry of “Lata paca”—“Bring pice”—pice being little Indian copper coins which form the currency at Zanzibar. This question is asked you in the streets or country roads, not merely by the poor, but even by well-to-do people. I was one day walking home from a feast to which I had been invited by the proprietor of a sugar plantation—a Swahili man. These people are mulattoes, partly Arab, but mostly negro. They are Mahometans and call themselves Arabs. ”

“ Steere notices it as a characteristic of the story-tellers of the Swahili, a people of mixed Arab and Negro descent at Zanzibar; [12] and it is perhaps inevitable in a professional reciter whose audience, [Pg 18] like himself, is restless and vivacious in so high a degree. The only case in which any restraint would be certain to be felt is where a narrative believed to be of religious import is given. Under the influence of religious feeling the most mobile of races become conservative ”

“ The Swahili live principally along the coast of British East Africa and at Zanzibar. They are a mixed race, being the descendants of Arab fathers and negro mothers. Their name is derived from the Arabic word suahil, coast; but it has also been said, by some who have found them scarcely so guileless as might have been expected, to be really a corruption of the words sawa hili, that is, "those who cheat all alike." However that may be, the men are as a rule of splendid physique and well qualified for the calling that the majority of them follow, that of caravan porters. ”

“ To that end we proposed to engage a dozen Swahili and half that number of Wa’Nyamwezi. Porters at that time were very scarce; but having secured one or two good men as a nucleus, we sent them into the bazaar at Nairobi to bring us any other men they could find who wanted employment.
[Pg 7]
The Swahilis are natives of Zanzibar and the adjacent coasts. They are of mixed—very mixed—descent, being mainly the offspring of various native slaves and their Arab masters. ”

“ We have an Arabic MS. in the mission library at Zanzibar, containing the story of 'Hasseebu,' but differing in many of the names and circumstances from the form given in the Arabian Nights. I do not know how far others of the tales may come from Arab sources. It must be remembered that as a Swahili is by definition a man of mixed Negro and Arab descent, he has an equal right to tell tales of Arab and Negro origin. ”

“ The Swahili men wear a long white cotton garment, like a night-shirt, called a kanzu; the women—who are too liberally endowed to be entirely graceful—go about with bare arms and shoulders, and wear a long brightly-coloured cloth which they wind tightly round their bosoms and then allow to fall to the feet. All are followers of the Prophet, and their social customs are consequently much the same as those of any other Mohammedan race, though with a good admixture of savagedom. ”

“ As traders, the Bihéans have gained certain advantages. Their Umbundu language almost takes the place in Central West Africa that the Swahili takes on the eastern side. It will carry you fairly well, at all events, along the main foot-paths of trade. They are richer than other tribes, too; they live a little better, they wear rather larger cloths, and get more to eat. But they are naturally despised by neighbors who live by fighting, hunting, fishing, and the manly arts. They are tainted with the softness of trade. ”

“ Far removed from such crass anthropomorphism, but not morally much improved, are the kindred Wa-Swahili, who by long contact and interminglings have become largely Arabised in dress, religion, and general culture. They are graphically described by Taylor as "a seafaring, barter-loving race of slave-holders and slave-traders, strewn in a thin line along a thousand miles of creeks and islands; inhabitants of a coast that has witnessed incessant political changes, and a succession of monarchical dynasties in various centres ”

“ Upon the plea of combating the spread of Mohammedanism, the missions have, except at the coast, declined to teach the Swahili language, which is the lingua franca of East Central Africa, and have perpetuated and are still endeavouring to perpetuate a host of tribal languages, which, although interesting as linguistic curiosities, prove a barrier to civilisation and progress. ”

“ The tsetse fly (Glossina morsitans) infests several districts; the sand-flea has been imported from the west coast. Land and water turtles are numerous.
Inhabitants.—On the coast and at the chief settlements inland are Arab and Indian immigrants, who are merchants and agriculturists. The Swahili (q.v.) are a mixed Bantu and Semitic race inhabiting the seaboard. The inhabitants of the interior may be divided into two classes, those namely of Bantu and those of Hamitic stock. What may be called the indigenous population consists of the older Bantu races. ”

“ The most curious thing in this collection is perhaps the latter part of the tale of 'Sultan Majnun,' from p. 254, where every one present joins in singing the verses, if they may be so called, which besides are not in Swahili. The words niulaga for the Swahili nimeua, and nilawa for nalitoka, are such as occur in more than one mainland language. I have heard stories referred to and partly told in which the verse parts were in the Yao and the Nyamwezi languages. But it is a constant characteristic of popular native tales to have a sort of burden, which all join in singing. ”

“ I might say here that the porters of East Africa, taking them all round, are a happy, careless lot. They will go through the greatest hardships on a journey, and on their return at once forget all their troubles in the pleasure of spending their wages as quickly as possible. They are chiefly Swahili, with a mixture of a few other tribes, such as the Wakamba. The Masai, however, even to this day, will not lower themselves to carry loads. ”

“ It consisted of an Italian stock, on which were grafted Greek, Arabic, and Turkish words, and was the regular language of trade for French, Spanish, and Italians.500 It is still spoken in many Mediterranean ports, especially in Smyrna, and in the early part of the nineteenth century was in use from Madagascar to the Philippines.501 From the coastal strip of the Zanzibar Arabs, recently transferred to German East Africa, the speech of the Swahili has become a means of communication over a great part of East Africa, from the coast to the Congo and the sources of the Nile. ”

“ In addition to carrying the loads, they pitch and strike camp, procure firewood and water, and build grass huts if a stay of more than a day is intended to be made at one place. On the whole, the Swahili porter is one of the jolliest and most willing fellows in the world, and I have nothing but praise for him. ”

“ One result of all this is too important to be passed by in silence, it is that the language of Zanzibar—the Swahili—being the official and the trade language, is everywhere more or less understood, so that whereas if you learnt one of the up-country languages you would be a stranger everywhere else, if you have well mastered the Swahili you are at home everywhere, in every tribe you will find some who can act as interpreters, and who can at once open to you the intricacies of their own tongue. ”

“ Broadly speaking, we had to deal with four distinct types of native—the Swahili-speaking tribes, the Kavirondos, the Kikuyus, and the Masai. The Swahili-speaking natives, whose tribes were numerous and included such fighting peoples as the Whahamba, Diruma, and Nandi, were most generally recruited from the coast areas; they were the most intelligent and adaptable natives in our service. Many of [201] them made splendid Askaris, while as trained porters, for machine-guns, signalling sections, and stretcher-bearers, they were extremely useful, and many thousands were utilised for such work. ”

“ It is a peculiarity of the African native that even when surrounded by the enemy and expecting attack at any minute, he has no idea of keeping on the alert and watching for his foe. I had a remarkable instance of this in the case of my own servant, a Swahili, whom I found herding sheep for the Kikuyu, and took into my service. He had originally come to the country with a caravan of Swahili traders, who, with the exception of himself, had all been murdered. ”

“ If there was one thing that puzzled my Kikuyu followers more than another in Mombasa, it was, perhaps, the fact that everything had to be paid for. In their own country, when any Swahili traders came to a village they were accustomed to give them a sheep for food, and never thought of asking payment, but here, among the Swahili themselves, they found that they could get nothing unless they were prepared to pay for it ”

“ It is very common in the streets of Zanzibar to hear one person call out to another—Ee Sungura wee! as much as to say—You fox, you! but there is more of reproach in the Swahili than in its English equivalent. There is a famous story of all the beasts agreeing to dig a well, and the Sungura alone refused to help. When it was finished, they watched in turn to prevent his getting water, but he cheated them all except the spider. Again, whenever a snake is mentioned, something more or less magical is sure to be connected with it.
Some likenesses to well-known English tales will strike every one. ”

“ The plural of kile is vile. What is the plural of:
ule?
[ile] hicho?
[hivyo] hili?
[haya]
CHAPTER 5 SYNOPSIS OF SWAHILI *⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠* 29. The principal tenses of Swahili are indicated by means of prefixes. Certain of these tenses are 'independent.; This means that if a verb is the only verb in a sentence, it must be in one of these tenses. Five independent tenses have prefixes that begin with a consonant. In these examples, the tense prefixes are underlined.
(Ashton 35-8, 187 Polomé 115-7, 120) *⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠* 53. The most troublesome thing about Swahili verbs is the way they form the negative. ”