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]

Bravanese
Mwiini
Chimwiini
Native toSomalia
RegionBarawa
EthnicityBravanese
Native speakers
(40,000 cited 1992)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3(included in Kiswahili [swh])
Glottologchim1312
G.412[2]
ELPMwini

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 edit

References edit

  1. ^ "Languages of Somalia". Ethnologue. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
  2. ^ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
  3. ^ I. M. Lewis, Islam in tropical Africa, Volume 1964, (International African Institute in association with Indiana University Press: 1980), p.7.
  4. ^ Abdullahi, p.11.
  5. ^ a b Nurse, Derek; Hinnebusch, Thomas J.; Philipson, Gérard (1993). Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History. Univ of California Press. ISBN 9780520097759.
  6. ^ Henderson, Brent. "About". chimiini.org. Archived from the original on 2018-09-03.
  7. ^ "Chimiini Language Project". users.clas.ufl.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-06-12. Retrieved 2019-02-06.

Further reading edit