Kirusi or virusi?
Kirusi or virusi?

Corpus-based research on COVID-19-related terminology in Swahili

Author(s): Beata Wójtowicz
Subject(s): Cultural history, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: COVID-19; coronavirus pandemic; Swahili language; terminology development; terminology lists
Summary/Abstract: The most recent coronavirus outbreak that began in China in December 2019 has affected every aspect of our lives. Not only has it forced many changes in our daily routines but also influenced our language and brought new words and phrases that are constantly evolving to describe the new reality. In times of crisis, it is very important that people get reliable information in a language they know and understand. Therefore, many efforts have been made to provide information and educational materials to African people in their mother tongues or well known local languages. This is also true for Swahili, which is the main vernacular language of East Africa. The beginning of the pandemic was accompanied by terminological chaos, as many new terms had to be invented to describe the new situation. In the case of Swahili, the Tanzanian National Kiswahili Council (BAKITA) published a terminology list with Swahili equivalents of English terms related to COVID-19. This list formed the basis of the author’s study on the usage of such terminology, e.g., UVIKO and virusi vya korona, in Swahili news texts. The research was based on the corpus “Swahili News 2021” compiled for this purpose from online resources in the Sketch Engine corpus tool.

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