Colonial period

After Germany attacked the region known as Tanganyika (present-day mainland Tanzania) for a
colony in 1886, it took notice of the wide prevalence of Swahili, and soon designated Swahili as
a colony-wide official administrative language. The British did not do so in neighbouring Kenya,
even though they made moves in that direction. The British and Germans both sought to
facilitate their rule over colonies where the inhabitants spoke dozens of different languages
thus the colonial authorities selected a single local language which they hoped the natives would
find acceptable. Swahili was the only good candidate in these two colonies.
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I, it was dispossessed of all its overseas
territories. Tanganyika fell into British hands. The British authorities, with the collaboration of
British Christian missionary institutions active in these colonies, increased their resolve to
institute Swahili as a common language for primary education and low-level governance
throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Kenya). Swahili was
to be subordinate to English: university education, much secondary education, and governance at
the highest levels would be conducted in English.
One key step in spreading Swahili was to create a standard written language. In June 1928, an
inter-territorial conference took place at Mombasa, at which the Zanzibar dialect, Kiunguja, was
chosen to be the basis for standardizing Swahili.[12] Today's standard Swahili, the version taught
as a second language, is for practical purposes Zanzibar Swahili, even though there are minor
discrepancies between the written standard and the Zanzibar vernacular.

Current status
Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three African Great Lakes
countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it is an official or
national language. The neighboring nation of Uganda made Swahili a required subject in primary
schools in 1992although this mandate has not been well implementedand declared it an
official language in 2005 in preparation for the East African Federation. Swahili, or other closely
related languages, is spoken by relatively small numbers of people in Burundi, the Comoros,
Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique.[13] and the language was still understood
in the southern ports of the Red Sea and along the coasts of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf
in the twentieth century.[10][14] In the Guthrie non-genetic classification of Bantu languages,
Swahili is included under Zone G.
At the present time, some 90 percent of approximately 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili in
addition to their first languages.[15] Kenya's population is comparable as well, with a greater part
of the nation being able to speak Swahili. Most educated Kenyans are able to communicate
fluently in Swahili, since it is a compulsory subject in school from grade one to high school and
a distinct academic discipline in many of the public and private universities.

The five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo are Swahili-speaking. Nearly
half the 66 million Congolese reportedly speak it,[16] and it is starting to rival Lingala as the most
important national language of that country.
In Uganda, the Baganda and residents of Buganda generally do not speak Swahili, but it is in
common use among the 25 million people elsewhere in the country and is currently being
implemented in schools nationwide in preparation for the East African Community.
The usage of Swahili in other countries is commonly overstated, being widespread only in
market towns, among returning refugees, or near the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. Even so,
Swahili speakers may number some 120 to 150 million people.[17] Many of the world's
institutions have responded to Swahili's growing prominence.
Methali (e.g. Haraka haraka haina baraka Hurry hurry has no blessing),[18] i.e. "wordplay,
risqu or suggestive puns and lyric rhyme, are deeply inscribed in Swahili culture, in form of
Swahili parables, proverbs, and allegory".[19] Methali is uncovered globally within 'Swah' rap
music. It provides the music with rich cultural, historical, and local textures and insight.

Name
Kiswahili is the Swahili word for the language, and this is also sometimes used in English. The
name Kiswahili comes from the plural sawh il ( )of the Arabic word sh il (), meaning
"boundary" or "coast", used as an adjective meaning "coastal dwellers". With the prefix ki-, it
means "coastal language", ki- being a prefix attached to nouns of the noun class that includes
languages.

Phonology
Swahili is unusual among African languages in having lost the feature of lexical tone (with the
exception of the numerically important Mvita dialect, the dialect of Kenya's second city, the
Indian Ocean port of Mombasa).[clarification needed]
Stress is on the penultimate syllable.

Vowels
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: //, //, /i/, //, and /u/. The pronunciation of the
phoneme /u/ stands between International Phonetic Alphabet [u] and [o]. Vowels are never
reduced, regardless of stress. The vowels are pronounced as follows:

// is pronounced like the "a" in father

// is pronounced like the "e" in bed

/i/ is pronounced like the "i" in ski

// is pronounced like the "o" in cord

/u/ is pronounced like the "u" in rule.

Swahili has no diphthongs; in vowel combinations, each vowel is pronounced separately.

Therefore, the Swahili word for "leopard", chui, is pronounced /tu.i/; that is, as two syllables.