Bravanese dialect
| Bravanese | |
|---|---|
| Mwiini | |
| Chimwiini | |
| Native to | Somalia |
Native speakers | 183,000 (2015)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | (included in swh) |
| Glottolog | chim1312 |
G.412[2] | |
| ELP | Mwini |
Bravanese, also called Chimwiini (ChiMwini, Mwiini, Mwini) or Chimbalazi[3] is a variety of 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. It is classified as a Northern Dialect of Swahili.[5]
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.[6] Ethnologue classifies its language status in Somalia as developing.[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
Notes
- ^ "Swahili". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2018-08-08.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "Chimiini Language Project". users.clas.ufl.edu. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
- ^ "Swahili". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
References
- Abdullahi, Mohamed Diriye (2001). Culture and customs of Somalia. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-31333-2.
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