 | Swahili is a Bantu language and is spoken by various communities inhabiting the African Great Lakes region including Rwanda.
Although only around 5 million people speak Swahili as their mother tongue, it is used as a lingua franca in much of East Africa. The total number of Swahili speakers exceeds 140 million, serving as a national language of four nations: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Congo. It is also one of the official languages of the African Union.
Some Swahili vocabulary is derived from Arabic through contact with Arabic-speaking Muslim inhabitants of the Swahili Coast. It has also incorporated German, Portuguese, English, Hindi and French words into its vocabulary.
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