| Altname | Mwiini |
|---|---|
| Nativename | Chimwiini |
| States | Somalia |
| Region | Barawa |
| Ethnicity | Bravanese |
| Speakers | 40,000 |
| Date | 1992 |
| Ref | [1] |
| Familycolor | Niger-Congo |
| Fam 2 | Atlantic–Congo |
| Fam 3 | Benue–Congo |
| Fam 4 | Bantoid |
| Fam 5 | Bantu |
| Fam 6 | Northeast Coast Bantu |
| Fam 7 | Sabaki |
| Fam 8 | Swahili |
| Iso 3 | none |
| Iso3comment | (included in [swh]) |
| Glotto | chim1312 |
| Glottorefname | Chimwiini |
| Guthrie | G.412 |
Bravanese, also called Chimwiini (ChiMwini, Mwiini, Mwini) or Chimbalazi,[2] is a language related to Swahili spoken by the Bravanese people, who are the predominant inhabitants of Barawa or Brava, in Somalia.[3] Maho (2009) considers it a distinct dialect, and it has been classified as a Northern Dialect of Swahili.[4] However, it strongly distinguishes itself from standard Swahili under all linguistic considerations.[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. It has fewer than 15,000 speakers.[6]
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.[4]
See also
References
- ^ "Languages of Somalia". Ethnologue. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
- ^ I. M. Lewis, Islam in tropical Africa, Volume 1964, (International African Institute in association with Indiana University Press: 1980), p.7.
- ^ Abdullahi, p.11.
- ^ 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.