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Tanzania is a multilingual country. There are many languages spoken in the country, none of which is spoken natively by a majority or a large plurality of the population. Swahili and English, the latter of which was inherited from colonial rule ( see Tanganyika Territory ), are widely spoken as lingua francas. They serve as working languages in ...
Zanzibar [a] is an insular semi-autonomous region which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania.It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 25–50 km (16–31 mi) off the coast of the African mainland, and consists of many small islands and two large ones: Unguja (the main island, referred to informally as Zanzibar) and Pemba Island.
Swahili, also known by its local name Kiswahili, is a Bantu language originally spoken by the Swahili people, who are found primarily in Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique (along the East African coast and adjacent littoral islands). [ 6] Estimates of the number of Swahili speakers, including both native and second-language speakers, vary widely ...
Swahili Arabic script on a one-pysar coin from Zanzibar c. 1299 AH (1882 CE) Swahili Arabic script on a carved wooden door (open) at Lamu in Kenya Swahili Arabic script on wooden door in Fort Jesus, Mombasa in Kenya. The Swahili language is the native tongue, and it is a member of the Bantu subgroup of the Niger-Congo family.
Kutchi-Swahili. Kutchi-Swahili, or Cutchi-Swahili, is a Swahili -based creole derived from the Kutchi language of the Kutch district in Gujarat and spoken among the Indian population of East Africa. It is the native language of some Kutchi families from Zanzibar that have settled in the larger cities of mainland Tanzania and Kenya, and is used ...
Swahili culture is the culture of the Swahili people inhabiting the Swahili coast. This littoral area encompasses Tanzania, Kenya, and Mozambique, as well as the adjacent islands of Zanzibar and Comoros along with some parts of Malawi and the eastern part of Democratic Republic of Congo. Swahili people speak Swahili as their native language ...
These ethnic groups are of Bantu origin, with large Nilotic-speaking, moderate indigenous, and small non-African minorities. The country lacks a clear dominant ethnic majority: the largest ethnic group in Tanzania, the Sukuma people, comprises about 16 percent of the country's total population, followed by the Wanyakyusa and the Chagga.
Tanzania's literary culture is primarily oral. Major oral literary forms include folktales, poems, riddles, proverbs, and songs. [ 10]: page 69 The greatest part of Tanzania's recorded oral literature is in Swahili, even though each of the country's languages has its own oral tradition.