Swahili

From Swahili swahili, from Arabic سَوَاحِلِيّ (sawāḥiliyy, “(people) of the coasts”), from سَوَاحِل (sawāḥil, “coasts”), plural of سَاحِل (sāḥil, “coast”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /swəˈhiːli/
• (US) IPA^(key): /swɑˈhili/, /swəˈhili/

• Audio (Southern England)

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Swahili

1. An agglutinative language of the Bantu branch widely spoken in East Africa. Born in its modern form from the hybridization of the Arabic and Bantu cultures, it was the language of the traders in East Africa, and spread along the routes of trade.

• KiSwahili, Kiswahili

Swahili (plural Swahilis or Swahili)

1. A member of various ethnic groups — mainly Bantu, Afro-Arab and Comorian — inhabiting the Swahili coast.

   Synonym: (plural) Waswahili

   • 2000, Arye Oded, Islam and Politics in Kenya, page 12:

     The Swahilis are a unique and important community that began to form before the arrival of Islam, as a result of intermarriage between Arab traders who came to the coast and women from local ethnic groups.

   • 2017, Derek Nurse, Thomas Spear, The Swahili, page 29:

     The final sources for the early history of the Swahili are the oral traditions related by them about their own past.

• Wiktionary’s coverage of Swahili terms
• Appendix:Swahili Swadesh list for a Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words in Swahili

• ISO 639-1 code sw, ISO 639-3 code swa (SIL)
• Ethnologue entry for Swahili, swa ⁠, a macrolanguage including:

Borrowed from English Swahili.

• IPA^(key): /ˌsʋaːˈɦi.li/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: Swa‧hi‧li
• Rhymes: -ili

Swahili n

1. Swahili (language)