page_title: Swahili people
section_title: Language
hierarchical_section_title: Swahili people / Language
caption_attribution_description: Carved wooden door (open) at Lamu in Kenya. These traditional Swahili doors are seen on many older buildings in Lamu.
context_page_description: The Swahili people are an ethnic and cultural group inhabiting East Africa. Members primarily reside on the Swahili coast, in an area encompassing the Zanzibar archipelago, littoral Kenya, the Tanzania seaboard, and northern Mozambique. The name Swahili is derived from Arabic: سواحل‎, romanized: Sawāhil, lit. 'coasts'. The Swahili speak the Swahili language, which belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family.
context_section_description: The Swahili speak as their native tongue the Swahili language, which is a member of the Bantu subgroup of the Niger-Congo family. Its closest relatives include Comorian spoken on the Comoros Islands, and the Mijikenda language of the Mijikenda people in Kenya.
  With its original speech community centered on Zanzibar and the coastal parts of Kenya and Tanzania, a seaboard referred to as the Swahili Coast, Swahili became the tongue of the urban class in the African Great Lakes region, and eventually went on to serve as a lingua franca during the post-colonial period.
caption: Swahili Arabic script on a carved wooden door (open) at Lamu in Kenya
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