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Bravanese, also called Chimwiini (ChiMwini, Mwiini, Mwini) or Chimbalazi, is a related to Swahili spoken by the Bravanese people, who are the predominant inhabitants of Barawa or Brava, in Somalia. Maho (2009) considers it a distinct dialect, and it has been classified as a Northern Dialect of Swahili. However, it strongly distinguishes itself from standard Swahili under all linguistic considerations.

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.

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.

See also

• Bravanese people

References

1. "Languages of Somalia". Ethnologue. Retrieved 30 October 2023.
2. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
3. I. M. Lewis, Islam in tropical Africa, Volume 1964, (International African Institute in association with Indiana University Press: 1980), p.7.
4. Abdullahi, p.11.
5. ^ Nurse, Derek; Hinnebusch, Thomas J.; Philipson, Gérard (1993). Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History. Univ of California Press. ISBN 9780520097759.
6. Henderson, Brent. "About". chimiini.org. Archived from the original on 2018-09-03.
7. "Chimiini Language Project". users.clas.ufl.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-06-12. Retrieved 2019-02-06.

Further reading

• Abdullahi, Mohamed Diriye (2001). Culture and customs of Somalia. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-31333-2.

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