Swahili military terminology: A case of an evolving non-institutionalized language standard

Abstract

Kiswahili, like all languages, is dynamic. It evolves to accommodate economic, scientific, technological and social changes. Such changes are evident in Kiswahili military terms. The changes can be traced back to the 16th century contacts with visitors from Asia and Europe to the East African Coast. The outcomes of these contacts were borrowed military terms which form relics of their impact on Kiswahili vocabulary. Moreover, with the advent of globalization and its attendant Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), Kiswahili has more contact with the outside world via English. Kiswahili has grown from describing rudimentary military strategies, processes and hardware to describing today’s highly sophisticated warfare. While such changes might appear inevitable, most of the military hardware is imported from Western countries. This paper therefore scrutinizes the non-institutionalised advancement of Kiswahili through the years to elaborate new military concepts such as terrorism (ugaidi), bomb (bomu), sniper (mdenguaji), nuclear weapons (silaha za kinyuklia), weapons of mass destruction (silaha za mauaji halaiki) and the linguistic strategies employed in creating such terms.