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Swahili definition

swä-hēlē
swahili
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An inhabitant of coastal eastern Africa for whom Swahili is the mother tongue.
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A Bantu language of the coast and islands of eastern Africa from Somalia to Mozambique. It is an official language of Tanzania and is widely used as a lingua franca in eastern and east-central Africa.
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A member of a people living on Zanzibar and the nearby mainland.
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The Northern Bantu language of this people, characterized by a vocabulary with many Arabic roots and used as a lingua franca in EC Africa and parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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An agglutinative language widely spoken in East Africa. Born of 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.
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Origin of swahili

  • Swahili from Arabic sawāḥilī of the coasts from sawāḥil pl. of sāḥil coast active participle of saḥala to scrape off, smooth šḥl in Semitic roots

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

  • From Swahili swahili, from plural of Arabic ساحل (sāḥil, “coast").

    From Wiktionary

Swahili Sentence Examples

  • The surrounding region has been overrun by Arabs and Swahili from the East African coast.

  • Another Star Trek publication suggested her first name is "Penda", a Swahili verb-ending that means "to love".

  • The coast of German East Africa (often spoken of as the Swahili coast, after the inhabitants of the seaboard) is chiefly composed of coral, is little indented, and is generally low, partly sandy, partly rich alluvial soil covered with dense bush or mangroves.

  • The warm currents setting landwards from the Indian Ocean bring both moisture and heat, so that the Swahili coast has a higher temperature and heavier rainfall than the Atlantic seaboard under the same parallels of latitude.

  • On the Swahili coast the south-east monsoon begins in April and the northeast monsoon in November.

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