Swahili is a Bantu language widely spoken across East Africa. It serves as a lingua franca in countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Swahili’s rich linguistic and cultural heritage is influenced by various languages due to historical trade, migration, and colonization. According to the eLinguistics.net analysis using specific software modules to assess linguistic relationships, the five languages most similar to Swahili are Chichewa, Nyakyusa, Nyankole, Kirundi, and Sukuma.
- Chichewa (57.3)
Chichewa is a Bantu language spoken primarily in Malawi, but also in Zambia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. The similarities between Swahili and Chichewa are rooted in their shared Bantu origins. For example, the noun class system, a characteristic feature of Bantu languages, is present in both languages, influencing how nouns are categorized and conjugated. Additionally, both languages have borrowed vocabulary from Arabic and English due to historical trade and colonization. - Nyakyusa (57.1)
Nyakyusa is spoken by the Nyakyusa people in Tanzania and Malawi. Swahili and Nyakyusa have similarities due to their geographical and cultural connections. Both languages belong to the Bantu family and exhibit similar phonetic patterns and verb conjugation rules. The interaction between Nyakyusa-speaking communities and Swahili-speaking traders has also led to a significant exchange of vocabulary and expressions. - Nyankole (54.7)
Nyankole, or Runyankore, is a Bantu language spoken in southwestern Uganda. The similarity to Swahili can be attributed to the shared Bantu roots, which manifest in comparable sentence structures, noun classes, and verb forms. Additionally, Uganda’s historical interactions and trade relations with Swahili-speaking regions have facilitated linguistic exchange, further enhancing the resemblance between the two languages. - Kirundi (54.6)
Kirundi is spoken in Burundi and is closely related to Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda. As a Bantu language, Kirundi shares a common linguistic ancestry with Swahili. This commonality is evident in the use of noun classes, agglutinative verb structures, and similar lexical items. The historical movements of Bantu-speaking peoples across East and Central Africa have fostered a strong linguistic bond between Kirundi and Swahili. - Sukuma (53.9)
Sukuma is the language of the Sukuma people, the largest ethnic group in Tanzania. These languages have shared grammatical and phonological features. The coexistence of Sukuma and Swahili speakers in Tanzania has also resulted in significant language contact, with many Sukuma speakers being bilingual in Swahili. This bilingualism facilitates the exchange of vocabulary and linguistic structures.
(to be considered for the list, the language must be spoken by at least one million people, or else Comorian would have been included)