ABSTRACT
Swahili belongs to the N orth-East Coastal Bantu group of the Benue-Congo family. The name is derived from the Arabic sawahil, the broken plural of sahil ‘coast’. Estim ates of the num bers speaking Swahili vary from 50 to 70 million and upwards; the great m ajority of these are bilingual, with Swahili used as a second language alongside o ther Bantu m other tongues (Chinyanja, Shona, Luba, etc.) and as a lingua franca for speakers of non-Bantu languages. Swahili is the national language of Tanzania and of Kenya, and is a main language in parts of Zaire and the Congo. There are many dialect forms spread over an enormous area stretching from the Somali border to M ozambique, and from the Comoro Islands to the Congo. The first steps towards the creation of a standardized Swahili were taken in 1930, when the Inter-Territorial Language Committee was form ed. African participation in this body began in 1946, with representatives from Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda, and Zanzibar. The work of standardizing the language is now in the hands of the Institute of Swahili Research in D ar es Salaam.
