Talk:Swahili language/Archive 1

message: What character set is used for writing Swahili?
: Normally the Latin alphabet (minus "q" and "x", iirc), but people have written it in the Arabic alphabet once upon a time (there's some examples of this in the House of Wonders, Zanzibar). — Matt Crypto 23:15, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Orthography 

message: I read that an important difference between Swahili and the rest of the Bantus is that it is not tonal. This was one of the argument for the Creole language interpretation, which is denied by the current redaction. -- Error 03:13 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
:Not all Bantu languages are tonal. This doesn't seem like a particularly strong argument for (or against) the creole idea. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 18:03, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Important Difference 

message: I've read in the last couple of years that the preferred names for bantu languages, even in English, is with their correct noun class prefix. In the case of Swahili, that would be "ki-". But I've heard conflicting suggestions as to how it's capitalized. I think it's either "KiSwahili" or "kiSwahili" but not "Kiswahili" as is written in this article. — Hippietrail 09:09, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a tirade on the name on Kiswahili, that should be moved elsewhere. --Error 01:48, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  We should place the article at the most common name in the English language, which is "Swahili"; that's the usual practice  on Wikipedia.  I've reproduced the discussion below, and redirected Kiswahili here; perhaps we should merge this into the article, but it needs reediting for NPOV. — Matt 23:22, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No, 'Kiswahili' redirects back to the 'Swahili' article, which needs to be fixed, especially since the first line of that article tells one to 'see Kiswahili'.  Quill 03:51, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: p.s. I agree with you, in English, the article on the Swahili language should be called simply 'Swahili'.  Simply put: Speakers of English say 'French', 'English', 'Swahili'....We do not say 'Of the French', 'Of the English', or 'Of the Swahili' (unless, of course, we're speaking of the French, of the English...oh, heck, you get the picture!).  Quill 04:00, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Preferred name of language 

message: I couldn't take it; I attempted an article.  It needs checking, though.  Kiswahili  Quill 05:00, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kiswahili, again 

message: I asked a question on Talk:Grammatical gender which I'll summarize here. This page claims that Swahili has 15 noun classes. I can only find 8 or perhaps 9 at the most (WA, VI, MI, MA, N, U, PA, MU, and KU). About the only way I can come up with 15 noun classes is by counting plurals separately, which seems silly (the same line of reasoning would say that Latin had 6 genders). Am I missing something? --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 15:43, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope, that's it. In the Bantuist linguistic tradition, singular and plural classes are most often counted separately (the pairings of them are called 'genders' though). The reason for this is that there is not always a one-to-one mappings from singular forms onto plural forms. Class 1 en 2 pair up, and so do 3 and 4, up to 9 and 10, buth class 11 takes its plural from class 10; and additionally, there are forms which can take plurals from several classes. — mark ✎ 21:49, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: How many noun classes?