Swahili belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo language family.
It developed along the East African coast and became a major language of trade and communication across parts of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and neighboring areas. Its name is related to the Arabic word sawāḥil, meaning “coasts.”
Swahili has substantial vocabulary borrowed from Arabic because of centuries of contact across the Indian Ocean. It has also absorbed words from Portuguese, German, English, and other languages. Despite this borrowing, its core grammar and noun-class system are Bantu.
Swahili is sometimes incorrectly classified as an Arabic language because of its Arabic loanwords or because it was historically written in Arabic-derived script. Today, it is most commonly written in the Latin alphabet and serves as an official or national language in several East African countries.