from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A Bantu language of the coast and islands of eastern Africa from Somalia to Mozambique. It is an official language of Tanzania and is widely used as a lingua franca in eastern and east-central Africa. Also called Kiswahili.
- n. An inhabitant of coastal eastern Africa for whom Swahili is the mother tongue.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- proper n. An agglutinative language widely spoken in East Africa. Born of the hybridization of the Arabic and Bantu cultures, it was the language of the traders in East Africa, and spread along the routes of trade.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. the most widely spoken Bantu languages; the official language of Kenya and Tanzania and widely used as a lingua franca in east and central Africa
Alternatively — and the most probable scenario — the first shape is a loan in Swahili from a language in which Dahl's Law operated longer, the Wami being one such group.
The very word Swahili came from the Arabic word sawahil, meaning “coast.”
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For about 2 hours we read health magazines in Swahili, told jokes, and even practiced some English.
Upendo is a word in Swahili that means like or love.
The instructions, although in Swahili, roughly translate to 'Do you have a question about health?
She was a thin Swahili woman with a serious face, a widow.
But when it comes to proving that the diminutive Ghailani (friends called him Foupi, meaning "the little one" in Swahili), actually intended to participate in the bombing plot, that's where the government may have a harder time.
"Pole, Pole" ( "slow" in Swahili), the guides kept telling us as we made our way around switchbacks and up sand slopes that were as steep as a ski mountain.
"Jambo, Jambo," which means "hello" in Swahili, they'd say as they passed us on the trails or woke us in the morning with steaming-hot mugs of tea.