Swahilization or Swahilisation refers to one of two practices: * the cultural assimilation of local peoples in Southeast Africa into the

Swahili people The Swahili people (, وَسوَحِيلِ) comprise mainly Bantu, Afro-Arab, and Comorian ethnic groups inhabiting the Swahili coast, an area encompassing the East African coast across southern Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and northern Mozambi ...

and their culture. * the post-independence promotion of the

Swahili language Swahili, also known as as it is referred to endonym and exonym, in the Swahili language, is a Bantu languages, Bantu language originally spoken by the Swahili people, who are found primarily in Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique (along the East Af ...

by the governments of Southeast African former colonies as a national and official language, alongside a greater cultural assimilation policy of Africanization (see

Julius Nyerere Julius Kambarage Nyerere (; 13 April 1922 – 14 October 1999) was a Tanzanian politician, anti-colonial activist, and political theorist. He governed Tanganyika (1961–1964), Tanganyika as prime minister from 1961 to 1962 and then as presid ...

and '' Ujamaa''). Swahili was the language spoken throughout the coastal tribes of Eastern Tanzania before the arrival of the European settlers. During the 1800s, the slave trades led by Arab merchants led Swahili to become a 50% derivative from Arabic. In the 1960s, the new republic of Tanzania replaced all English education content in elementary schools by Swahili content in a move to erase the colonial past of the country. The middle schools and up were supposed to do the same by the year 2000.

, who initiated this policy, translated himself

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's ''Julius Caesar'' and '' The Merchant of Venice'' in Swahili. This trend was also picked up in the USA, favored by the rise of the Black Power movement. By the 1990s, the Swahilization of the Tanzanian education system did not really happen, English remaining a dominant academic language, and many reforms were abandoned. In the country's justice courts, trials were led in Swahili but the archives were maintained in English. The mix of Swahili and English in the country's spoken languages was called ''Kiswengli'' (Kiswahili-English). On a scholarly level, many scientific words do not exist in the Swahili language. By the 1990s, 8,000 new Swahili technical words were introduced, but ill-spread throughout the academic system. The Swahilization of the country may have isolated it from the international marketplace during the 1970s and 1980s. By the early 2000s, Kiswahili started to be used intra-group in

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

, a sign that the country's Swahili-based lingua franca was starting to emerge as a dominant language. 2010 studies have shown that, in

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

, Swahili became predominant in the regions that traditionally spoke Matengo.

References

Southeast Africa Swahili Cultural assimilation Swahili language {{cultural-assimilation-stub