Kwanzaa and Swahili

Here's a funny parody of "T'was the Night before Christmas": Kwanza Komedy.

The one thing I've always wondered about the made-up holiday called Kwanzaa is addressed in this parody by these lines: "Who cares if Swahili's not our mother tongue?" Why are the names of Kwanzaa's days in Swahili, an East African language? The ancestors of our Black American fellow citizens came from West Africa.

I make this observation as a former student of Kiswahili (Hujambo bwana, habari gani?), having studied the language two semesters at the university level under the tutelage of my esteemed mwalimu, Erastus Namulala.

Here's the Our Father in Kiswahili, from Pater Noster:

Here's the Hail Mary from the same site:

Salamu, Maria, umejaa neema,
Bwana yu nawe,
umebarikiwa kuliko wanawake wote,
na Yesu, mzao wa tumbo lako amebarikiwa.

Maria mtakatifu, Mama wa Mungu,
utuombee sisi wakosefu,
sasa na saa ya kufa kwetu.
Amina.

Kiswahili is considered to have the most regular grammar of any modern language. As might be seen in the above examples, Kiswahili is essentially a Bantu-Arabic creole. Like Tok Pisin (Talk Pidgin) in Papua New Guinea, Jamaican Creole, or Haitian Créyol, it developed as a trade language between two linguistic groups. A pidgin is a simplified form of communication used between two linguistic groups, usually containing elements from both languages. A pidgin has no native speakers. A creole is a "pidgin that grows up," to borrow a phrase from one of my professors, meaning a creole is a pidgin that is passed onto a second generation, who thereby become its first native speakers. They, in turn, pass it on to their children. The creole then develops as any other language would.

Our beloved English tongue can be considered a creole in many ways, as the Anglo-Saxons who brought the language to the British Isles were later conquered by Danes and Normans, who, especially the latter, added so much to our language.

[link to original article via A conservative blog for peace]