A Bantu Ghost in Uralistics?
A Bantu Ghost in Uralistics?

Summary/Abstract: Swahili is not to be taken as evidence for an original Uralic lingua franca in this guilt-by-association way, simply because it does not originate in any pidgin or creole language. Arabic can be said to play the same role in the development of Swahili as it does in many of the Turkic languages, e.g. Tatar. The study of Swahili, therefore, could be of interest to anyone studying the impact of the Turkic languages on the Uralic languages. Studies of these current processes in Africa can shed light on previous processes in, for instance, the Volga-Kama area of Russia. It is in this way Swahili is of use to Uralistics: properly described by trained scholars with an up-to-date view on the language in question, cooperating with scholars in other linguistic subdisciplines.

• Details
• Contents