About Swahili Language | Swahili | Alphabets in Swahili

Countries

African Union, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East African Community, Kenya

Total No. Of Countries

Rank: 11 (Overall)

0 46

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National Language

Burundi, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, South Sudan, Tanzania

Second Language

Not spoken in any of the countries

Speaking Continents

Africa

Minority Language

Not spoken in any of the countries

Regulated By

Chama cha Kiswahili cha Taifa (Kenya)

Interesting Facts

Swahili language has borrowed many words from Arabic language.
The oldest written scripts in swahili language were found in 18th century.

Similar To

Burundi, Rwanda, Malawi Languages

Derived From

Arabic Language

Alphabets

Alphabets in

Alphabets

Rank: 6 (Overall)

18 247

👆🏻

Phonology

How Many Vowels

Rank: 2 (Overall)

0 32

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How Many Consonants

Rank: 11 (Overall)

9 60

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Scripts

Latin

Writing Direction

Hard to Learn

Language Levels

Rank: 2 (Overall)

2 12

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Time Taken to Learn

36 weeks

Rank: 13 (Overall)

3 88

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Greetings

Hello

Habari

Thank You

Asante

How Are You?

Habari gani?

Good Night

Usiku mwema

Good Evening

Habari za jioni

Good Afternoon

nzuri Alasiri

Good Morning

Habari za asubuhi

Please

tafadhali

Sorry

pole

Bye

bye

I Love You

nakupenda

Excuse Me

Samahani

Dialects

Dialect 1

Kiunguja

Where They Speak

Zanzibar island

How Many People Speak

75,000,000.00

Rank: 12 (Overall)

1.5 960000000

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Dialect 2

Kimrima

Where They Speak

Dar es Salaam

How Many People Speak

75,000,000.00

Rank: 10 (Overall)

700 274000000

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Dialect 3

Kimgao

Where They Speak

Kilwa

How Many People Speak

75,000,000.00

Rank: 9 (Overall)

2 230000000

👆🏻

Total No. Of Dialects

Rank: 12 (Overall)

0 188

👆🏻

How Many People Speak

How Many People Speak?

150.00 million

Rank: 13 (Overall)

0 1200

👆🏻

Speaking Population

0.42 %

Rank: 34 (Overall)

0 89

👆🏻

Native Speakers

15.00 million

Rank: 40 (Overall)

0 873

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Second Language Speakers

75.00 million

Rank: 14 (Overall)

0.01 400

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Native Name

Kiswahili

Alternative Names

Kisuaheli, Kiswahili

French Name

swahili

German Name

Swahili

Pronunciation

[swaˈhili]

Ethnicity

Swahili people or Waswahili

History

Origin

6th century

Language Family

Niger-Congo Family

Subgroup

Benue-Congo

Branch

Bantu

Language Forms

Early Forms

No early forms

Standard Forms

Swahili

Language Position

Rank: 19 (Overall)

1 120

👆🏻

Signed Forms

Swahili Sign Language

Scope

Individual, Macrolanguage

Code

ISO 639 1

ISO 639 2

ISO 639 2/T

swa

ISO 639 2/B

swa

ISO 639 3

swa

ISO 639 6

swa

Glottocode

swah1254

Linguasphere

99-AUS-m

Types of Language

Language Type

Living

Language Linguistic Typology

Language Morphological Typology

Know Alphabets in Swahili

When you start learning to write in any language the Alphabets form a skeleton of any language. Let's talk About Swahili Language, where you will learn the number of letter in Swahili Alphabets. Every language has its own set of alphabets or characters so it is necessary to know alphabets in Swahili. Swahili phonology gives Swahili vowels and Swahili consonants. There are 5 vowels and 21 consonants in Swahili language. Based upon the number of alphabet, vowels and consonants in the language we can check if Swahili is one of the Most Difficult Languages. All about Swahili language is given in detail in this section.

All Swahili countries

Want to explore all Swahili countries? About Swahili language serves you with all Swahili Speaking Countries. Countries that use Swahili as official language are called as Swahili countries.

Countries that use Swahili as their National Language are: Burundi, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, South Sudan, Tanzania.

Second language indicates to any language which the person learns in addition to first or native language.

Countries that use Swahili as second language are: Swahili is not spoken as second language in any of the countries.

You can also go through all European Languages and explore more about their speaking population, alphabets, greetings, dialects and many more.

Learn Swahili greetings

Languages are used by every human being to communicate. And communication begins with the greetings. First step to form any interaction is to learn Swahili Greetings. Whenever you are travelling to new country where in you don’t know the local language of that country then you should at least be familiar with some greetings to start any formal or informal conversion. When we talk about Swahili language, we are always interested in learning useful phrases in Swahili language.Learn Swahili greetings that can be used in formal situations:

Hello: Habari
Thank you: Asante
Good Morning: Habari za asubuhi
Good Evening: Habari za jioni
Good Afternoon: nzuri Alasiri

All Swahili Language Codes

Get to know all Swahili language codes here. There are several languages spoken all over the world where in most of the languages have alternate names which come from diverse sources. All Swahili Language Codes are assigned with unique code. There is usually two or three letters code for each language. In most of the applications, these language codes are used where it is tedious to use language names.