List of Swahili Words of Arabic Origin

Baswahili of east Africa must come to terms with the fact that their language is "fundamentally Arabic." The question that many of us African never asked or never asked ourselves is not necessarily how many words that Kiswahili borrowed (a better term would be to "inherit")from its mother Arabic,but which words.Words like Binti,rafiki,habari,Bibi,furahi,bahati,binadamu,baraka,hasira,asubuhi,hewa,samaki,etc., these words cannot be borrowed like those that English borrowed from French,and so many other languages that borrow words from others as a result of trade,close contacts,occupation and dominant cultures.Therefore Kiswahili is very much an Arab "Dialect" and should be recognized as such.Kiswahili was not corrupted by Arab slave traders as many of us were taught in high schools. Arabic gave birth to Kiswahili and we Africans must learn to live with it.

Kiswahili was fisrt spoken by Arab merchants from Oman and Yemen around 11th century,when they made their annual trade winds sail between the middle east and the east coast of Africa at a location between Somalia and Kenya.Gradually these sailors made small coastal settlements and eventually married local African women.This community became known as "Bilad Sawahil" the beach people or the coastal people.Soon afterwards these people began to have trouble with Somalis and had to move southwards and became Baswahili as we know them today along the east coast of Africa from Somalia to Mozambique.

That Being said,Kiswahili has and deserves a special place among major world languages.It is number two in Africa,surpassed only by mother Arabic.In 19th century,Kiswahili became very handy for all types of undesirable characters who had invaded the dark continent.From European bounty hunters,Asian and middle eastern smugglers and slave traders and zealous missionaries.During the cold war,Kiswahili was heard on radio Moscow,Beijing,BBC and Deutche Welle.It became the language of the African musicians of the 1950-70's where it was popularized and adopted by every metropolitan community in the sub saharan Africa.

I have compiled about three hundred words if you want to post them let me know.
Thank you and keep up the good work.

Israel Ntaganzwa, New York

yes, please post the words you have.
could you wite them the same way as they have been pronounced in Swahili.

Can someone please translate "struggle and emerge" into Arabic Swahili please? Thank you.

Struggle -
n. jitihada, pambano,
v. -jitahidi,

Emerge
v. -jitokeza, -ibuka,

thank you both for your responses. would either of you be able to translate the phrase "struggle and emerge" into the swahili in the arabic script. i spent the summer volunteering at a school in kenya and the motto of the school is 'struggle and emerge' so i would like to have it in the arabic if possible. thank you so much.

Interesting, in Swahili we'd probably say

'Jitahidi, Ushinde' - Struggle and Win, or literally push yourself (the ji is reflexive) and you win.

Especially for a school motto. I think the idea here is that the students are engaged in a jihad against ignorance, or poverty, and that education is the way to victory, to emerging out of that darkness. We still say jihad as a loan word, i.e. unmodified from the Arabic.

thank you both again. how would that be written in the arabic script? thanks.