A Handbook Of The Swahili Language: As Spoken At Zanzibar

The author reveals that there is probably no African language so widely known as the Swahili. It is understood along the coasts of Madagascar and Arabia; it is spoken by the Seedees in India, and is the trade language of a very large part of Central or Intertropical Africa. Zanzibar traders penetrate sometimes even to the western side of the continent, and they are in the constant habit of traversing more than half of it with their supplies of Indian and European goods. Throughout this immense district anyone really familiar with the Swahili language will generally be able to find someone who can understand him, and serve as an interpreter. This consideration makes it a point of the greatest importance to our Central African Mission that Swahili should be thoroughly examined and well learnt. For if the members of the Mission can go forth from Zanzibar, or, still better, can leave England already well acquainted with this language, and provided with books and translations adapted to their wants, they will carry with them a key that can unlock the secrets of an immense variety of strange dialects, whose very names are as yet unknown to them. The work, then, which is here begun is not to be regarded as though its utility were confined to the islands and the narrow strip of coast of which this language is the vernacular, but much rather as the broad foundation on which our labours in the far interior must for many years be built up.