Bravanese Dialect
The Bravanese dialect is a northern dialect of Swahili spoken by the Bravanese people in Somalia. Bravanese is also called Chimwiini or Chimini, the prefix Chi meaning language and Mwiini (or Miini) referring to an alternate name of the Bravanese people. Due to the coastal location of the city Barawa it is thought that Bravanese was once used as a lingua franca for the region. Today, communities of Bravanese speakers can be found in the United States of America, Kenya and in the United Kingdom.
Bravanese Language History
Bravanese is a dialect of Swahili language, which is part of the Niger-Congo language family and originated with the Bantu people on the East African coast. Swahili’s vocabulary has long shared similarities with the Taita, Pokomo and Mijikenda languages. As the language evolved, Swahili added loan words from Persian, Hindustani Malay and Arabic, with Arabic contributing the majority. Later Portuguese was introduced to the area and contributed additional loan words. Today 30% of Swahili’s language is derived from loan words.
Historically Swahili has been written in the Arabic alphabet, with its earliest document dating to 1711. Today Swahili is written using the Latin alphabet.