Bravanese dialect

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bravanese
Mwiini
Chimwiini
Native toSomalia
Native speakers
183,000 (2015)[1]
Language family
Niger–Congo?
Language codes
ISO 639-3(included in swh)
Glottologchim1312
Guthrie code
G.412[2]
ELPMwini

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[]

  • Bravanese people

Notes[]

  1. ^ "Swahili". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2018-08-08.
  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. ^ "Chimiini Language Project". users.clas.ufl.edu. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
  7. ^ "Swahili". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2019-02-06.

References[]


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