Swahili in Somalia: Chimwiini of Baraawe and Kibajuni of the Bajuni Islands

Two Swahili languages on the Somali coast

The Italian linguist Marcello Lamberti, in his 1981 survey of Somalia's languages, found two Swahili-speaking minorities (Landinfo 2011, p. 10):

• the oldest families of the town of Baraawe (Brava), whose language Somalis call Af-Chimwiini;
• the Bajuni of Kismaayo and the islands off its coast, whose language Somalis call Af-Bajuni and the Bajuni call Kibajuni. Lamberti judged Kibajuni the oldest speech form in Kismaayo.

The prefix ki- or chi- means "language" in Swahili and related languages (Landinfo 2011, p. 10). The linguists Derek Nurse and Thomas Hinnebusch classify both as northern dialects of Swahili; the Bantu classification of Jouni Maho (2009) treats each as a separate language (Bravanese dialect, Wikipedia; Bajuni dialect, Wikipedia).

Chimwiini (Bravanese)

Chimwiini, also called Chimbalazi, Mwiini or Bravanese, is the language of the Bravanese people, the old inhabitants of Baraawe (Bravanese dialect, Wikipedia). The Chimiini Language Project led by Brent Henderson at the University of Florida says the language differs strongly from standard Swahili in sounds, grammar and words (Bravanese dialect, Wikipedia, citing the Chimiini Project). It has a simpler three-way tense system than neighbouring Bantu languages, which some linguists read as a sign that it once served as a trade language on the coast.

After the civil war began in 1991, most speakers left Baraawe. They now live in Columbus and Atlanta in the United States, in London and Manchester, and in Mombasa, Kenya. The Chimiini Project puts the total at fewer than 15,000 speakers (Bravanese dialect, Wikipedia).

Chimwiini was written in Arabic script. Sheikh Uways al-Barawi, born in Baraawe in 1847, modelled his Arabic spelling of southern Somali on the one the Amrani families of Baraawe used to write Chimwiini (Wadaad's writing, Wikipedia, citing Lewis 1958 and Martin 2003).

Kibajuni (Bajuni)

Kibajuni, also called Tikuu, is spoken by the Bajuni people of the small Bajuni Islands, the coast of Kenya and parts of southern Somalia, where they are a minority (Bajuni dialect, Wikipedia, citing Abdullahi 2001 and Mwakikagile 2007). Lamberti noted that it has some sound changes of its own but is a Swahili dialect (Landinfo 2011, p. 10). Nurse and Hinnebusch record a sound like "ndr", a "d" with an r-like ending, in its consonants (Bajuni dialect, Wikipedia, citing Nurse and Hinnebusch 1993).

Landinfo noted in 2011 that the number of speakers of these minority languages still in Somalia was likely low after the civil war (Landinfo 2011, p. 9).

Read more

• Minority communities
• Lower Juba
• Mushunguli (Chizigula)