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Swahili Borrowings from English
Abstract
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Swahili is, by origin, a Bantu language which was strongly influenced by Arabic. In the course of time Swahili has borrowed words from a variety of languages. During the last thirty or forty years it is not surprising to find that Swahili has continued to enrich its vocabulary, more particularly from English.
... For instance, Krumm (1940) suggests that words of oriental original constitute between 20 and 25, depending of place of data collection. Another earlier publication by Gower (1952) focused on the contribution of an ex-colony language (English) to the lexicon of Swahili (the lingua franca of Tanzania). As a result, Swahili reveals co-existence of the Arabic layer of words with English words, as exemplified in (1). ...
... Secondly, western medical care and health facilities which were provided mostly by missionaries and colonizers provided foreign words in Swahili. Gower (1952) claims that the area of infrastructure and transportation had been a fore front of contact between Europeans and Africans who spoke Swahili. Such environments as the harbours in Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar and Kilwa experience longer communications between speakers of English and Swahili as co-workers or passengers. ...
... Other transport areas like urban centres and points along railways and highways were affected most (Ibid). Lastly, Gower (1952) reports that in those days when Swahili people contacted Europeans, people speaking English had a different life style in terms of food and eating manners, dressing style, dancing ways and many other ways. Such a contact area brought into Swahili many words. ...
... As Gower (1952) pointed out, one of the ways to understand human contacts is to study areas of contact. Tanzanian communities encountered German and British missionaries for about 120 and 200 years and, as a result, several religious-oriented words entered into Bantu languages. ...
... While the term doctor (daktari or mganga in Kiswahili) are illustrated by words in Table 7, the loanwords for nurse (nesi, muuguzi in Kiswahili) appear in Table 9. Maghimbi (2012) pointed out that formal education transmits culture mainly by bringing into the country some developmental changes. One of the findings in various researches show that the education sector is one of the areas that bring a large amount of loanwords geared to accommodate new concepts (Gower, 1952;Mous & Qorro, 2009;Lusekelo, 2013). In perpetuation of the discussion, four terms are discussed with regard to this linguistic area: school, teacher, write and book. ...
‘Similar’ Language Contact but ‘Different’ Language Change:
Historical Lessons from Loanwords in Tanzanian Bantu Communities
Amani Lusekelo*
Abstract
This paper contributes to the on-going discussion about integration of foreign cultures into African communities, one of the areas documented by Sam Maghimbi. It articulates the results of human contacts through examination of loanwords for similar semantic notions across Bantu languages of Tanzania. The rationale for this study emanates from a lacuna in previous works that focused on phonological and morphological changes, and undervalued the power of internal semantic modifications that accommodate new concepts. The paper analyses loanwords of individual words that surround three contact areas: western (formal) education, Christian religion, and (modern) healthcare. The paper shows that contact situations may lead to adoption of new words in some cases, or adjustments of the semantics of existing lexicons to accommodate new concepts, in other instances. In addition, it argues that Bantu languages differ significantly as regards the sources and flow of integration of new concepts.
Keywords: languages contact, cultural integration, historical linguistics, loanwords, Tanzanian Bantu
... It is also interesting to note that there are different names for the same thing in Tanzanian Swahili and that they refer to slightly different things. For example, the Swahili word 'Keki' (from Cake) refers to European-style cakes, while 'Maandazi' refers to cakes that can be bought in the local market; 'Dansi' (from Dance) refers to dance forms with a European flavour, such as Latin, and 'Ngoma' refers to traditional dance (Gower, 1952). ...
Language is one of the fundamental mediums through which the culture of a country or a people is transmitted. It is through language that we can find many traces of history and foreign influence, which can help us to learn a lot about history and culture. At the same time, the post-World War II period has seen rapid social, political, cultural, and technological changes, and the world as a whole has been undergoing unprecedented changes for over a century since the Cold War and countries and peoples have had to seek common ground and find opportunities for cooperation in the midst of globalisation, especially for Third World countries, which are at a disadvantage in terms of economic development and culture. Three representative Third World countries - Tanzania, Indonesia, and Paraguay - are chosen for this study, which seeks to identify trends in the use of foreign languages in Third World countries by examining their historical and post-World War II development of foreign language cultures. Trends in the development of loanwords in languages. By focusing mainly on local economic and cultural developments after the Second World War and comparing them with the historical situation in these Third World countries (mainly during the colonial period), a new picture will emerge from the unnoticed corners of the world, showing us the way to the future of language development from the perspective of loanwords.
... Kuingiliana na kuathiriana kwa lugha ni sifa mojawapo ya lugha katika jamii zenye wingilugha kama ilivyo kwa nchi ya Tanzania (Mekacha, 2011:174-175 na Mbaabu, 2007 (Gower, 1952;Polome, 1967:9 na Kishe, 2016:1). Petzell (2005:86) (Petzell, 2005:85 Gichuru (2010:46-47) anaeleza kuwa ukopaji wa msamiati ni utaratibu wa kuchukua maneno kutoka lugha toaji na kuyaingiza katika mfumo wa maneno wa lugha pokezi. ...
Lugha ya Kiswahili ina sauti zake, miundo yake ya silabi na mfuatano wa sauti unaotofautiana na ule wa lugha ya kiingereza.hivyo basi nomino zinapotoholewa kutoka lugha ya kiingereza kuingia katika Kiswahili hulazimika kufanyiwa mabadiliko ili ziendane na mahitaji ya fonolojia ya lugha ya Kiswahili. Kwa hiyo utafiti huu unachunguza mabadiliko ya kifonolojia katika nomino za Kiswahili zilizohotoholewa kutoka lugha ya kiingereza zilizomo katika kamusi ya kiingereza –kiswahihili (TUKI, 2006) na kamusi ya Isimu na Falsafa ya Lugha (Massamba, 2016), Data ya utafiti huu ilikusanywa kutoka maktabani na uwandani. Data ya maktabani ilikusanywa kutoka katika kamusi teule kwa kutumia mbinu ya usomaji makini na data ya uwandani ilikusanywa kutoka kwa wanafunzi wa Shahada ya Awali katika Kiswahili mwaka wa tatu wa Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam kwa kutumia mbinu ya usaili na kurekodiwa kwa …
... These English items are not found only in spoken Kiswahili, they are also present in the print media and other written texts. Much work has been done on borrowing in the area of spoken data such as Gower (1952), Polome (1967), Mwita (2009) etc. Some research works on written data can also be found in Kachru (1989), Petzell (2005), Dzahene-Quarshie (2010). ...
We have observed that not only does borrowing feature in aural data; it is also prominent in written texts, specifically in newspapers. This paper examines the use of borrowed words found in issues of Tanzanian newspapers from 2007 to 2009. The study also sought views from newspaper writers through a qualitative and well-structured questionnaire on reasons why they would prefer using borrowed English words to Kiswahili native words. The analysis of the questionnaire shows that sometimes Kiswahili words were either too lengthy or writers use English items as means of prestige, sophistication or even sometimes for stylistic purposes, among others. We also noted that although writers treat English items as Kiswahili, the Kiswahili class systems are not affected. Traces of evidence of spelling variations of these English borrowed items into Kiswahili confirm assertions made by other scholars in this field that most borrowed items are not standardized.
... See Table 1 for learner characteristics relative to 2 | Languages spoken by participants and number of speakers, grouped by similarity to English on a 1 (least overlap) to 5 (most overlap) scale. Within the germanic or romance languages (english-similarity score = 5) (Somali, 2017); Japanese, with an estimated 10% of the lexicon borrowed from English (McKenzie, 2010, p. 14); Kinamigin, with documented Spanish presence in the Camiguin Island in the Bisayas region of the Philippines (Barreveld, 2001, p. 78); and Swahili, with borrowings from English where "contact with western civilization" existed, including in transportation, medicine, sports, and schools (Gower, 1952). b Most of the major languages of the Philippines were categorized as having substantial borrowings, due to heavy lexical influence of Spanish (Lipski and Mühlhäusler, 1996;Rubino, 1997;Stolz, 2006;Mattes, 2014). ...
Understanding language learning in later life can elucidate how linguistic experiences and age-specific cognitive skills can be leveraged for language acquisition, providing insight into how lifelong experiences configure our learning capacity. In this study, we examined to what extent acquisition and maintenance of a non-native language (English) is scaffolded by cognitive skills and previous linguistic experiences in older adults; and to what extent these cognitive/linguistic factors predict older learners’ success in acquiring novel functional language. We recruited 53 participants who were native speakers of Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog, and Somali, had continued to learn English as adults, and were currently exposed to majority-English contexts. To identify contributors to participants’ English skills, we administered a language history and self-reported proficiency interview, brief cognitive testing, and verbal fluency tasks in L1 and English. We found that digit span and orientation measures were cognitive predictors of English proficiency, while similarity of known languages to English, L1 skills, and English language exposure were linguistic predictors of English skills. To examine participants’ ability to maintain language knowledge and to learn new functional English, we also conducted a preliminary longitudinal service-based study in a subset of 19 participants using our Specific-Purpose English Communication System for Seniors (SPECSS) curriculum. In this subset of SPECSS learners, we identified digit span and orientation, but not age, as cognitive predictors of short-term language maintenance. Further, better novel English learning as a result of our curriculum was observed in learners whose other known languages were less similar to English. Findings inform best practices in developing language curricula for older adults, and help generate new hypotheses on preparedness for language learning across the adult lifespan with a possible interaction between cognitive skills and transfer of knowledge from previous languages in multilingual older learners.
Language conflict is commonly studied and understood as an outcome of contact between speakers of different languages. In this article, we explore language conflict in the conversations of speakers of a sole language – Kiswahili. We argue that language conflict can as well occur among speakers of the same language. Using sociolinguistic data collected ethnographically among ordinary speakers of Kiswahili at the Namanga border town in East Africa, we show that these conflicts arise as a result of issues such as (i) citizen mobility, (ii) existence of several varieties and labels, (iii) varying attitudes of people towards different varieties, and (iv) demonstrating linguistic power. Consequently, we demonstrate that contrary to the assumptions of many scholars of Kiswahili and others, the Namanga border town bares a perfect example of a space in East Africa where meaningful and informative studies relating to different sociolinguistic aspects of Kiswahili, such as contact and conflict can be undertaken.
The tendency for people to have better memory for animate (living) concepts than inanimate (nonliving) concepts in memory tasks involving free recall and recognition suggests that animacy status can be an important predictor of memory. To date, however, the effect of animacy on paired-associates recall has been mixed: Some studies have found an animacy advantage, some have found an animacy disadvantage, and some have found no difference by animacy. We tested the hypothesis that the within-pair relationship of the two words in a pair matters more for cued recall than animacy itself. In two experiments, college students studied animate and inanimate English word pairs for a cued-recall test. We varied whether the pairs involved two typical exemplars from the same category (e.g., SALMON–TROUT; FORK–SPOON), one typical and one atypical exemplar from the same category (e.g., DOCTOR–SCIENTIST; HOUSE–IGLOO), or two unrelated words from different categories (e.g., SERGEANT–COBRA; MAGAZINE–PLIERS). Respectively, these pair types produced an animacy disadvantage, an animacy advantage, and no difference by animacy in both experiments. We then examined several measures of within-pair similarity for the items. All were positively associated with paired-associates recall, but animacy had no effect on cued recall above and beyond the relationship of these measures to recall. These results suggest that the within-pair relationship matters more for cued recall than does animacy. Uneven variation in within-pair relationships for animate versus inanimate pairs—rather than animacy itself—might therefore produce the apparently inconsistent effects of animacy on paired-associates recall.
As C. L. R. James demonstrated in Beyond a Boundary, organised team sports epitomised the colonial attempt to inculcate hierarchy, stability and discipline into the minds and spirits of the colonised. These values were not, however, passively internalised. Taken as a microcosm of the colonial experience, this study of football in Zanzibar illustrates the limits of Europeans' ability to mould Africans' social experiences. Sport in Zanzibar, as elsewhere in the empire, often carried undertones of conflict and at times became overtly political. Yet football represented much more than a political battlefield to the players and spectators. For men in colonial Zanzibar playing and watching football were often central social experiences. This article explores the diversity of meanings attributed to football in 1900–50.
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Hausa is probably the most widely spoken language in Negro Africa. Besides being generally spoken throughout Northern Nigeria, its motherland, Hausa is, as Westermann and Bryan note, widely understood in other West African countries. They cite colonies of Hausa-speakers in Dahomey, Togo, Ghana, Cameroons, Chad, and ‘many of the greater centres in North Africa’. They could also usefully have mentioned the Sudan, where pilgrims from Northern Nigeria have settled in their tens of thousands. Indeed, it is often said that you will find Hausa-speakers from Dakar to Port Sudan, from Leopoldville to Fez. The explorer Heinrich Barth in the 1840's had his first Hausa lesson in Tunis, and fifty years later it was to Tripoli that Bishop Tugwell of the Church Missionary Society and his pioneer team of five went to study Hausa before undertaking their bold missionary thrust into the emirates. Westermann and Bryan point out that the total number of Hausa-speakers cannot be estimated in view of the enormous distribution of the Hausa and the great number of those who speak Hausa as their second language. Few of us would disagree with Cust's judgement that Hausa ‘has obtained the rank of a lingua franca and is the general vehicle of communication between the peoples speaking different languages’. Counting those who have recourse to Hausa as their second or vehicular language, it would be no exaggeration to claim that some 20 million persons ‘hear’ Hausa, as the West African languages so picturesquely express it.
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It is a well established fact that every culture contact has its effect on language. Every new thing or concept that is introduced requires a name. This is achieved either by coining a word in the language of the people to whom it is introduced or by the adoption of a foreign word. Thus it is possible to trace the different culture influences on any people by establishing the origin of the foreign words in their language. The fact that in Swahili most commercial terms are of Arabic origin (e.g. fedha = money, duka = shop, biashara = trade, &c.) would seem to prove that from ancient times Arabic traders sold their wares on the coast of East Africa. Today the increasing number of English words in Swahili is indicative of the influence of British administration and its introduction of modern amenities (baisikeli = bicycle, motakaa = motor-car, reli = railway, &c). The spread of Christianity in Africa may be seen by the general use of such words as padre (priest), ubatizo (baptism), Biblia (Bible), &c, as also from the use of Christian names now heard everywhere. Even among pagans there are so-called wapenda jina (people who desire a name), who are ashamed of their pagan names and call themselves Pauli, Kasiani, &c, in order to belong, by name at least, to Christianity, the religion of the day.
In Mr. Lyndon Harries's ‘Popular Verse of the Swahili Tradition’, published in Africa, April 1952, there appears a poem ‘The Song of the Poor Man’, taken from Muhammad Kijuma's collection of manuscripts made early in the present century. It might be of interest to students of Swahili to compare it with a version from Siu, which was recently dictated to me by a native of Siu and checked with another native of the same place. These two depended solely on memory and had no written record-to assist them.
There are a large number of Zulu words which derive from English and Afrikaans (or earlier from Dutch). In almost all the semantic categories English semantic adpotives are most numerous. Alternative forms sometimes occur, with one adoptive from Afrikaans and the other from English.