Over 1,000 Years of Contact Between Arabic and the Eastern and Southern African Languages: A Case Study of Kiswahili and Setswana

Abstract

Arab travellers and traders along the eastern African coast, more than 1000 years ago, were the first Arabic speaking people to bring Arabic language in contact with the other African languages in eastern and later southern Africa. Over the years, Arabic gained a lot of influence in the region. The impact of Arabic can be seen, especially in old scripts, loanwords, Arabic accents and sound features in some of the local languages.

This article examines the nature and extent of contact situations between Arabic and two languages, namely Kiswahili, spoken in eastern Africa, and Setswana, spoken in southern Africa. The study is based on the Language Contact Theory, which states that the nature, length and intensity of language contact are the key factors determining the linguistic and sociolinguistic processes that take place. Contact between languages could be either direct or indirect. The main argument of the study is that the extent of influence of a language on another depends not only on the nature of contact, but also, and mainly, on the length and intensity of contact. The paper highlights the domains in which elements of Arabic origin have infiltrated or been adopted in these languages.