Bravanese dialect
Swahili variety of Somalia
| Bravanese | |
|---|---|
| Mwiini | |
| Chimwiini | |
| Native to | Somalia |
| Region | Barawa |
| Ethnicity | Bravanese |
Native speakers | (40,000 cited 1992)[1] |
Language family | Niger–Congo?
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | (included in Kiswahili [swh]) |
| Glottolog | chim1312 |
G.412[2] | |
| ELP | Mwini |
Bravanese, also called Chimwiini (ChiMwini, Mwiini, Mwini) or Chimbalazi,[3] is a Bantu language related to Swahili spoken by the Bravanese people, who are the predominant inhabitants of Barawa, or Brava, in Somalia.[4] Maho (2009) considers it a distinct dialect, and it has been classified as a Northern Dialect of Swahili.[5] However, it strongly distinguishes itself from standard Swahili under all linguistic considerations.[6]
Due to the ongoing Somali Civil War, most speakers have left the region and are scattered throughout the world in ex-refugee immigrant communities in places such as Columbus and Atlanta in the United States, London and Manchester in the United Kingdom, and Mombasa, Kenya. It has fewer than 15,000 speakers.[7]
Bravanese may have once served as a regional lingua franca due to the key coastal location of Barawa. One piece of linguistic evidence for this comes from morphological reduction. For example, it has a three-way tense system, which is simpler than that of neighboring Bantu dialects historically spoken in Somalia.[5]
See also
References
- ^ "Languages of Somalia". Ethnologue. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
- ^ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
- ^ I. M. Lewis, Islam in tropical Africa, Volume 1964, (International African Institute in association with Indiana University Press: 1980), p.7.
- ^ Abdullahi, p.11.
- ^ a b Nurse, Derek; Hinnebusch, Thomas J.; Philipson, Gérard (1993). Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History. Univ of California Press. ISBN 9780520097759.
- ^ Henderson, Brent. "About". chimiini.org. Archived from the original on 2018-09-03.
- ^ "Chimiini Language Project". users.clas.ufl.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-06-12. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
Further reading
- Abdullahi, Mohamed Diriye (2001). Culture and customs of Somalia. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-31333-2.
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