ABSTRACT
From modest beginnings as the speech of a small group of mixed farmers, Swahili has become the lingua franca of millions of people in eastern Africa and beyond (Lewis et al. 2015). How did this extraordinary transformation begin? This chapter outlines what is known (and not known) about the origins and initial development of the Swahili language and its dialects, and what this tells us in turn about the history of its speakers. It is based largely on research in historical and comparative linguistics undertaken since the 1970s and continuing through to the present. The potential contribution of research of this kind to understandings of the African past is well established (Nurse 1997; Blench 2006), and the Swahili-speaking world has already been the subject of important studies (including Nurse and Spear 1985; Nurse and Hinnebusch 1993). Needless to say, this work is neither exhaustive nor unproblematic. As we shall see, many gaps in our knowledge remain, while current research suggests that major revisions might be made to existing reconstructions of Swahili linguistic and cultural history.
