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After Tanganyika and Zanzibar unification in 1964, Taasisi ya Uchunguzi wa Kiswahili (TUKI, Institute of Swahili Research) was created from the Interterritorial Language Committee.
In 1966, (activist and author) Maulana Ron Karenga associated the black freedom movement with Swahili, choosing Swahili as its official language and creating the Kwanzaa celebration.
The conventional historical narrative depicts Standard Swahili as a constructed language that was developed over the course of the 20th century by the efforts of German, British, and postcolonial governments.
The roots of the Swahili language can be traced back to the Bantu-speaking peoples who migrated to the East African coast around the first millennium AD. The Bantu languages are a large group of languages spoken predominantly in Central, East, and Southern Africa.
Swahili, which is spoken by five million people as a mother tongue and some 30 million as a second language, is a Bantu lingua franca important in both commerce and literature. Much scholarly work has been done since the late 19th century to describe and classify the Bantu languages.
However, it is generally accepted that Swahili developed as a result of trade between the coast people of East Africa and Arabs. The first reference to define commercial relations between Arabs and the east coast of Africa dates back to the end of the 1st century A.D.
Swahili, spoken natively by various groups traditionally inhabiting about 1,500 miles of the East African coastline, has become a second language spoken by tens of millions in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where it is an official national language.
Early Origins. Swahili, known as "Kiswahili" in the language itself, originates in the coastal regions of East Africa, where it developed as a trade language. It was influenced by the interactions of local Bantu-speaking communities with Arab and Persian traders who frequented the coast.
In 1966, activist and author Maulana Ron Karenga associated the black freedom movement with Swahili, choosing Swahili as its official language and creating the Kwanzaa celebration. The term Kwanzaa is derived from the Swahili word ku-anza, meaning “to begin,” or “first.”
The conventional historical narrative depicts Standard Swahili as a constructed language that was developed over the course of the 20th century by the efforts of German, British, and postcolonial governments.