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Tanzania's post-independence language policy has promoted Swahili as a means of achieving national and linguistic unity. This policy has affected the Ngoni language in south-western Tanzania. Today, Swahili has permeated communication all over Tanzania, even in rural and remote areas. This paper discusses lexical borrowing and especially borrowing in the basic vocabulary, which is considered less susceptible to borrowing, to establish the vitality of Ngoni in this bilingual setting. In using a new method where locally produced photos are used for elicitation, and mirroring the data with socio-demographic metadata, the results contribute to the understanding of what borrowing implies regarding the future of the language. Age-related differences were found amongst Ngoni speakers, but the differences in language use attributed to socio-demographic factors were far fewer than expected. Borrowing is solidly established not only among the young in the Ngoni community. Both borrowing and codeswitching (CS) were ...

While Uganda includes speakers of widely diverse Sudanic, Nilotic and Bantu languages, none of the languages is spoken by more than 20% of the population. Until recently, speakers of Luganda have constituted the largest 'minority'; these speakers possessed special political privileges during the British colonial period. The status of Luganda has been challenged in the 1990s by the emergence of Runyakitara, a language based on a combination of the western Uganda lacustrine languages of Runyankore, Runyoro, Rutoro and Rukiga. This paper discusses the construction of Runyakitara in the context of the current political situation in Uganda. Along with the role and status of indigenous languages,the functions and status of Swahiliand English are discussed. The reinvigoration of indigenous languages and the relative decline of Swahili in Uganda are shown to be related to the power and solidarity of functions that these languages fulfil in society.

This paper argues that the relationship between Kiswahili and ethnic community languages in Tanzania is not diglossic. The first part considers the definitions and redefinitions of diglossia and how they describe the Tanzanian sociolinguistic profile. The second part considers language policy in Tanzania and its implications, especially for the coexistence of Kiswahili and ethnic community languages. The third part argues that some of the basic tenets of diglossia and its redefinitions—such as functional specialisation, the High/Low distinction, the harmonious coexistence of the languages and the stability of the sociolinguistic profile—do not apply to the relationship between Kiswahili and other languages in Tanzania. The final part proposes the use of another term to describe the relationship.

Contact phenomena are prominent in Lubumbashi Swahili and they belong to the core of the language. As such they are exploited creatively and they mean an important enrichment in the communicative tools available. The aim of this paper is to investigate the motives for the integration of French elements into Lubumbashi Swahili. Focusing on the mechanisms through which these elements are inserted, I argue that the mixing process is carefully regulated and controlled to serve several communicative functions. Fabian (1982) already found that loans are employed as stylistic devices. Here, I observe that they can also function grammatically. From this perspective, looking at the way these insertions are finally applied, two distinct mixed variants which serve different linguistic and social functions are discussed.

Individual multilingualism in a multilingual society is often associated with a mass education system. The Kenyan situation illustrates the intertwined complexity of the pedagogical and socialising aspects of language contact in such a system. Using ethnographic observation of classroom interaction in three primary schools, determinants of teachers' language choice and codeswitching among English, Swahili, and mother‐tongue are explored: official school policy, cognitive concerns, classroom management concerns, values and attitudes about societal multilingualism. Analogously to monolingual modality switching, codeswitching between languages often provides a resource to focus or regain students' attention, or, to clarify, enhance, or reinforce lesson material. Instructional demands and inconsistent patterns of use, however, may also lead to linguistic insecurity and the mislabelling of content or conceptual problems as language competency problems. Understanding the complex role of language, and h...

The importance of paying attention to the ideological motivation for LP has been stressed in recent papers. The case of Swahili in Tanzania is explored from the viewpoint of its function as a political tool. In the course of this discussion the role of the country's first President in the promotion of the language is outlined, and language policy is seen as one of the inevitable components of crisis‐management. The recent reversal of an earlier policy of eventual Swahili‐medium secondary and higher education is noted; the present conflict of interest between policy‐implementers (in favour of Swahili‐medium) and policymakers is seen as the outcome of successful mass‐mobilisation coinciding with the decline in the role of Swahili as a political tool.

This paper attempts to reveal some pedagogic problems related to the use of Kiswahili as the medium of instruction in teacher training colleges in Tanzania. The paper is based on a theory of language as a medium of communication. Language skills such as speaking and writing are among the theoretical issues discussed and then linked with actual practice. Among other problems, the paper spells out three major problems. Firstly that there is lack of clear Kiswahili academic register and very often tutors mix the science and the arts registers. Secondly, tutors under this programme were not adequately prepared. For example, there was not a single seminar organised for them. Lastly, but not least, there is a problem of dissemination of terminologies. Pamphlets and journals which contain Kiswahili terminologies for the schools hardly reach the consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight a growing body of research showing that a different configuration of cultural attributes has evolved for males and females in Swahili‐speaking Islamic communities on the Kenya Coast such that the men's ‘culture’ follows the dictates of conservative Southern Arabian Islam while that of the women, in the absence of in situ Shafi‐ite female role models yet in constant association with each other, has evolved as a dynamic system of expressive culture within Islamic institutions—especially within the secularised institution and celebration of marriage. This point is made with reference to a number of recent studies of Swahili expressive culture (e.g. Parker, 1974; Russell, 1981; Campbell, 1983) and of Swahili society and social structure (e.g. Strobel, 1979; Swartz 1982a) that point out the importance of women's associations in Kenyan Coastal culture. The effect of Islam and sexual segregation on ethnicity is looked at in the context of the Swahili‐speaking co...

The aim of this paper is to provide the reader with a profile of the linguistic and cultural diversity in Bukavu. Given the scant amount of information that is available on the language situation in the Republic of Zaire, an evaluation is first made of the language policy that has been followed in that country over the past 20 years and its impact on the overall educational system is assessed. The second part of the paper contains a preliminary account of the functions of the respective mother tongues (indigenous languages) as opposed to Swahili (a national language) and French in Bukavu. It is argued that the introduction of French as the medium of education creates an artificial dichotomy within the overall population and that this social cleavage could be countered by revised policy with regard to instruction in French. This conclusion would seem to be borne out by the results of the Communicativity Index as applied to a sample of the population of Bukavu