Simba = lion in Swahili. Thank Disney for this one.

Uhuru = freedom. Remember that character in Star Trek? (I don’t.) The actress who played Commander Uhara actually chose her own name based on this word.

Safari = journey. This makes sense.

Kwanzaa (the holiday, which started in 1966) comes from the Swahili phrase “matunda ya kwanza“, which means “first fruits”. Kwanza = first. Kwanzaa celebrates unity.

Jambo = hello. Jumbo, the popular circus elephant, was probably named after this word. Now we call anything that’s very large jumbo.

Swahili is only spoken by maybe 5-10 million people as a first language, but it’s a common lingua franca in East Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. A lingua franca (literally Frankish language) is a language that’s used to communicate when 2 people (or more) speak different languages. For example, if I speak English and Harry speaks French, but we both know Italian – we can use Italian to communicate, and Italian would be a lingua franca. English is commonly used as a lingua franca, and this is part of the reason why English has become so popular. I think Swahili will grow from its use as a lingua franca.

Wikipedia says that Swahili is a national/official language of four nations. It’s the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.

Swahili has been influenced by many other languages. Almost 35% of the language comes from Arabic (12 centuries of trading with Arabic speaking traders), and it also has English, French, German, and Portuguese influences.

The word for Swahili in the language is Kiswahili (we hear this word sometimes in English too). Ki- is a prefix for languages.

I really liked learning about Swahili (I should say Kiswahili), so I may decide to do another one sometime soon!