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Presented to the LIBRARY of the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PROFESSOR S. NAGATA SWAHILI-ENGLISH DICTIONARY BY A. C MADAN, M.A. STUDENTOFCHRISTCHURCH,OXFORD OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1903 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON, EDINBURGH NEW YORK Dcpt. of Anthropology THIS Dictionary is an attempt to bring together in a con- venient form materials for the study of the language most widely known throughout East and Central Africa, and to combine them in the light of a long, though in various ways limited, experience. It would be more accurately described as an annotated vocabulary of the dialect of Swahili commonly spoken in Zanzibar city. It cannot lay claim to the formal completeness, especially in the treatment of verbs, which attaches to the idea of a dictionary, and it deals with a dialect which in respect of a large number of words is distinguished by the Swahilis themselves from the Swahili dialect of the coast. It is based on the lists of words, singularly accurate and relatively com- plete in themselves, furnished by Bishop Steere's Handbook of Swahili and scattered throughout his collections and trans- lations, and on Krapfs Dictionary of Swahili works issued more than twenty years ago. Later sources have also been drawn upon, especially Pere Sacleux's Dictionnairc fran<;ais- swahili, 1891, and the ever-increasing volume of Swahili litera- ture (chiefly documents, letters, stories and poetry) due to the industry and scientific enthusiasm of German colonists and scholars. No work, however, at s (1903) which attempts the same object as the present. It was beyond the scope of Bishop Steere's plan to supply more than full I words. As to Krapfs monumental work, it may be enough to express a h< pe that it will never be re remains in ie to every student of Swahili, and has the PREFACE iv permanent value and charm of genuine philological pioneer workbyan.honest and able researcher. It deals almost entirely with the dialect ofSwahili used at Mombasa, andrevision might make it more practically useful by the removal of inaccuracies and repetitions, and by modifying1 the spelling and arrange- ment, but such treatment would be analogous to re-writing Schliemann's Troy or Livingstone's Journals. The many first- handexplanations and examples are tooprecious,however,to be left unused, and it is especially on these that the present Editor has ventured freelyto draw. As to the use made of these and other materials, this Dictionary makes no claim to be encyclopaedic, or to include more than the commoner technical terms of arts, crafts and commerce, or to represent fully the flora or fauna of Zanzibar. Like other dictionaries, it presupposes an elementary acquaint- ance with the grammar of the dialect dealt with, in this case a very simple one. But (apart from imperfections due to ignorance or oversight) it will probably be found to provide sufficiently for the ordinary wants of officials, missionaries, travellers, teachers and translators, especially when used in connexion with the English-SwahiliDictionary (also published by the Oxford University Press, second edition, 1901) by the same Editor. Reasons for attempting to provide a Dictionary of this kind may be briefly stated. The common language of Zanzibar has hitherto been the best known and most widely useful form of Swahili. And Swahili is still by far the most important member of the Bantu family of language, i. e. of the solid block of dialects, closely related among themselves and clearly differentiated from all others, which are spoken throughout about a third of the African continent, i.e. over nearly the whole of it from Nigeria and the Soudan on the north to the Hottentot region on the extreme south. Hence Swahili has been ranked not unreasonablyamongthe twelve most important