Swahili Master Classes
Swahili in the World today
Swahili is one of the top seven major languages of world spoken by approximately 100 million speakers around the globe. Swahili is a popular African language and is mentioned to be one of the fastest growing languages of the world in terms of the number of speakers. Currently Swahili is among the official Lingua Francas of Africa and it is currently used as an official language in the African Union (AU) parliament. There are more than one hundred colleges and universities in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia offering Swahili courses in the world today. The USA has more universities offering Swahili courses than any other country in the world. In Canada Swahili courses are taught at the University of Toronto, University of York, and University of Manitoba.
There are several International Swahili radio networks in the world today such as the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation-UK), VOA (Voice of America-U.S.A.), Deutschewelle (Germany), RSA (Radio South Africa), Radio Cairo (Egypt), Radio Japan, Radio Beijing (China), All India Radio and Radio Moscow.
Although Swahili has many borrowed words from languages such as Arabic, English, German, Portuguese, Persian and Hindi, which comprise about 40% of the Swahili vocabulary, the process seems to be a reciprocal as there are some Swahili words and phrases adopted by other languages. For example, the phrase ‘mumbo-jumbo’ in English might have evolved from a Swahili nonsense phrase ‘mambo-jambo’ used for salutation. Also the word for journey in Swahili is ‘safari’ which is now an English word.
Various popular movies such as the Last King of Scotland, Hotel Rwanda, the Lion King and Darwin’s Nightmare have used and promoted Swahili in one way or another. There are many popular Swahili songs including: Malaika Nakupenda (I love you, Angel) by the late Miriam Makeba (Mama Africa) of South Africa, Hakuna Matata (No Worries) in the Lion King, Jambo Bwana (Hello Mister) by the Mushroom Band of Kenya, All Night Long (by Lionel Ritchie), Nakupenda Regina (I love you, Regina),and the Liberian Girl by Michael Jackson.
You can find numerous Swahili Songs on Youtube!
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