Bravanese, also called Chimwiini (ChiMwini, Mwiini, Mwini) or Chimbalazi[3] is a variety of Swahili spoken by the Bravanese people, who are the predominant inhabitants of Barawa, or Brava, in Somalia.[4] Maho (2009) considers it a distinct dialect, and it has been classified as a Northern Dialect of Swahili.[5] However, it strongly distinguishes itself from standard Swahili under all linguistic considerations.[6]
| Bravanese | |
|---|---|
| Mwiini | |
| Chimwiini | |
| Native to | Somalia |
Native speakers | 183,000 (2015)[1] |
Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | (included in swh) |
| Glottolog | chim1312 |
G.412[2] | |
| ELP | Mwini |
Due to the ongoing Somali Civil War, most speakers have left the region and are scattered throughout the world in ex-refugee immigrant communities in places such as Columbus and Atlanta in the United States, London and Manchester in the United Kingdom, and Mombasa, Kenya. It has fewer than 15,000 speakers.[7]
Bravanese may have once served as a regional lingua franca due to the key coastal location of Barawa. One piece of linguistic evidence for this comes from morphological reduction. For example, it has a three-way tense system, which is simpler than that of neighboring Bantu dialects historically spoken in Somalia.[5]
Languages of Somalia | |
|---|---|
| Official languages | |
| Regional languages | |
| Foreign languages | |
| Immigrant languages | |
| Sign languages | |
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Note: The Guthrie classification is geographic and its groupings do not imply a relationship between the languages within them. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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