Africa Essay

Throughout life one consistently hears words such as ethnicity, tradition, religion, language and morals.   These words all have to do with Culture. Culture is defined to be patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. In other words culture denotes the whole product of an individual, group or society of intelligent beings. This can include art, science, technology, moral systems as well as the characteristic behaviors and habits of a group. (Fage). Cultures are different all throughout the world. In Africa there are many cultures but one that many have heard of is Swahili.
Swahili isn’t just a language spoken in many countries in Africa. Swahili are a people and culture found on the coast of East Africa. There are an estimated 300,000 through 750,000 Swahili people on the coastal regions of the Islands of Kenya, Tanzania and North Mozambique. (Fage) Swahili is derived from the Arabic word Sawahil, meaning, “coast dwellers” and they speak the Swahili language. (Polomé) There are three ways one can be defined as a Swahili person. The first way one is considered a Swahili person is to be an original inhabitant of the region and speak a proto-Swahili dialect. (Polomé) The second way is to come from the Middle East and Persia after the advent of Islam; and to be mixed with the local people there providing cultural infusion and numerous loan words from Arabic and Persian. Finally the last way is comprised of the previous two ways in addition to the numerous peoples in the interior of African and other Asian immigrants that adopted the Swahili language. (Polomé)
When one hears the word Swahili they may or may not think of Swahili as a culture or form of people, but as a language. Swahili also known as Kiswahili is a Bantu language. The reason Swahili is known as a Bantu language is because it is part of the group belonging to the Niger-Congo family. (Polomé) The word Bantu means people. Swahili is a language of many...