Sabaki languages

As Sabaki languages ​​, derived from the name of the River Sabaki, referred to five closely related Bantu languages ​​in East Africa. These include the widespread throughout East Africa Swahili in Kenya on the Tana river spoken languages ​​Pokomo and Malankote ( Elwana ), the dialects of the Mijikenda on the Kenyan and Tanzanian coast and the north- Shikomor in the Comoros.

The Sabaki languages ​​belong to the subgroup northeast coastal Bantu (English Northeast Coast Bantu, NECB abbreviated ) within the Eastern Bantu languages ​​, which classified the linguist Thomas Hinnebusch in the 1970s.

The geographical spread of the Northeast Coastal Bantu languages ​​suggests that this language group spread from the south from what is now Tanzania. The other transmission form Sabaki languages ​​is controversial, especially in connection with the Shungwaya - lore, in which return the Mijikenda on an area of ​​origin in the north. According to Thomas Spear and Derek Nurse ( 1985) was the common area of ​​origin of the Sabaki languages ​​in the region between the Tana River in the south, the Indian Ocean to the east and the two rivers Jubba and Shabelle in the north, between the present-day northeastern Kenya and the southern Somalia. Hinnebusch, however, locates the area of ​​origin of the Sabaki and the Saghala languages ​​( from the Chagga Taita - group of the Eastern Bantu languages) in the region between Kilimanjaro, Pare Highlands and Taita Hills and considers it unlikely that the precursor of Sabaki - speakers only moved further north and then south again.

In the purely geographical classification of Bantu languages ​​by Malcolm Guthrie the Sabaki languages ​​are divided into the zones G and E.