How many native speakers of Swahili are there?
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The exact number of Swahili speakers, be it native or second-language speakers, is unknown and a matter of debate. Various estimates have been put forward and they vary widely, from 50 million to over 100 million. Swahili serves as a national language of four nations: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the DRC. Shikomor, the official language in Comoros and also spoken in Mayotte (), is related to Swahili. Swahili is also one of the working languages of the African Union and officially recognised as a lingua franca of the East African Community. South Africa legalized the teaching of Swahili in South African schools as an optional subject beginning in 2020.
Swahili language
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With between 50 – 100 million speakers, Swahili is lexiconically similar to other eastern Bantu languages such as Comorian which have differing levels of mutual intelligibility. Swahili is already used unofficially in many UN organizations as the United Nations Office at Nairobi, one of the four major UN global offices (in addition to offices in New York City, Vienna, and Geneva), is located in Nairobi, Kenya. The media branch of the UN, UN News (https://news.un.org/), already includes translations into Swahili.
Official languages of the United Nations
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Settla features a noun class system that differs from standard Swahili, which like most Bantu languages contains a rich noun class system. Since most Settla speakers are native speakers of English, which lacks a complex noun class system, Settla appears to also have a less complex noun class system than standard Swahili. Although there needs to be more research on the specifics, it can be concluded that the speakers of Settla do not disregard this system, but their patterns do most certainly differ from standard Swahili.
Settler Swahili
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Swahili, known as Kiswahili to its speakers, is used throughout large parts of East Africa and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo as a lingua franca, despite being the mother tongue of a relatively small ethnic group on the East African coast and nearby islands in the Indian Ocean. At least as early as the late 18th century, Swahili was used along trading and slave routes that extended west across Lake Tanganyika and into the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. Swahili rose in prominence throughout the colonial era, and has become the predominant African language of Tanzania and Kenya. Some ethnic groups now speak Swahili more often than their mother tongues, and many, especially in urban areas, choose to raise their children with Swahili as their first language, leading to the possibility that several smaller East African languages will fade away as Swahili transitions from being a regional lingua franca to a regional first language.
List of lingua francas
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Some 80 percent of approximately 49 million Tanzanians speak Swahili in addition to their first languages. The five eastern provinces of the DRC are Swahili-speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese reportedly speak it. Swahili speakers may number 120 to 150 million in total.
Swahili language
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Lingala is used by over 10 million speakers throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a large part of the Republic of the Congo, as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic, although it has only about two million native speakers. Its status is comparable to that of Swahili in eastern Africa.
List of lingua francas
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ǂʼAmkoe is moribund and severely endangered. There are only a few dozen native speakers, most born before 1960 (one Sasi speaker was born in 1971, one N!aqriaxe speaker in 1969), many of whom no longer speak the language fluently. The first language of the younger generations, and even of many older, native speakers who no longer speak ǂʼAmkoe well, is Gǀui, a Khoe language, in the case of N!aqriaxe; Kgalagadi, a Bantu language that is the local lingua franca, in the case of ǂHoan; and the Ngwato dialect of Tswana, in the case of Sasi.
ǂʼAmkoe language
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The Nyanga language (native name "Kinyanga") is a language spoken by the Nyanga people in Kivu province, north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Speaker estimates range from 27,000 (Biebuyck & Matheene 1970) to 150,000 (1994 census). Many of the Nyanga speak Congo Swahili, the dominant regional lingua franca, as a second language. Nyanga is a Bantu language. Most of the (scarce) linguistic research conducted on Nyanga has been based on the materials published by Biebuyck and Mateene.
Nyanga language
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Soga, or Lusoga, is a Bantu language spoken in Uganda. It is the native language of the Soga people or Basoga of the Busoga region of southern Uganda. With over three million speakers, it is one of the major languages of Uganda, after English, Swahili, and Luganda. However, it is largely restricted to the Busoga region, which is mainly within the natural boundaries of Lake Victoria to the south, Lake Kyoga to the north, the Nile river to the west and the Mpologoma "(Lion)" river to the east of Namutumba district. It is tonal.
Soga language
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According to "Ethnologue", the Comorian Swahili variety is divided into four principal dialects: Ngazidja, Ndzwani, Maore and Mwawli. Ngazidja is spoken on the Grande Comore Autonomous Island, and has around 312,000 total speakers. Ndzwani is spoken on the Anjouan Autonomous Island, and has roughly 275,000 total speakers. Maore is spoken on the Comoros, Mayotte and Madagascar islands, and has an estimated 136,500 total speakers. Mwali is spoken on the Moheli Autonomous Island, and has about 28,700 total speakers.
Shirazi people