Literary Response Journal
Britannica wrote an article on the Kiswahili language, which is spoken by some African communities that impressed me. Previously, I have heard some neighbors talk in the language, and it was kind of interesting in terms of the ease with which the language flowed. Also, there are several songs that I have heard them listen to that were awesome. In a recent demonstration, there was a Kenyan man that was leading people in chanting out “Haki yetu,” which translates to “Our rights.” Thereby, when I found an article about the language, I couldn’t help myself but read it.
One of the things that fascinated me about the language is how it is a rich mixture of other languages. Other than Arabic and Bantu, Swahili also has some English, Persian, Portuguese, and French influences that came about from trade contact. Interestingly, the language is spoken by Eastern Africa and some parts of Southern Africa. An average of about fifteen million people speaks the language. It’s surprising how many people it unites. Contrary to English, whereby the plural is attained by adding suffixes, in Swahili, the plural of singular words is achieved by adding prefixes to the words.
There are several challenges that I experienced when reading the article. One of them was that it had numerous names that were in Swahili. Well, that was expected considering the topic of the article. Secondly, it would have been easier to locate the towns and countries mentioned had there been an image accompanying the literature. Probably, a map or diagram showing the geographical locations and directions of movement. This would assist in clearly understanding the history of the language.