Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: How many native speakers of Swahili are there?
The exact number of Swahili speakers, be it native or second-language speakers, is unknown and a matter of debate. Various estimates have been put forward and they vary widely, from 50 million to over 100 million.[8] Swahili serves as a national language of four nations: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the DRC. Shikomor, the official language in Comoros and also spoken in Mayotte (Shimaore), is related to Swahili.[9] Swahili is also one of the working languages of the African Union and officially recognised as a lingua franca of the East African Community.[10] South Africa legalized the teaching of Swahili in South African schools as an optional subject beginning in 2020.[11]
Malaika is a Swahili song written by Tanzanian musician Adam Salim in 1945. This song is possibly the most famous of all Swahili love songs in Tanzania, Kenya and the entire East Africa, as well as being one of the most widely known of all Swahili songs in the world. "Malaika" in this context means "angel" in Swahili, and this word has always been used by the Swahili speakers to refer to a beautiful girl. 
Swahili culture is the culture of the Swahili people inhabiting the Swahili Coast. This littoral area encompasses Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique, as well as the adjacent islands of Zanzibar and Comoros and some parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Malawi. They speak Swahili as their native language, which belongs to the Niger-Congo family.
In the '80s, the wave of deportation from Katanga brought Swahili in all five territories of the East Kasai. Those deported once back home, they spread Swahili throughout the territory. So, with an estimated rate of 8% of Swahili-speakers, Swahili Language became the second national language most spoken at Katanda.
Language exchanges have been viewed as a helpful tool to aid language learning at language schools. Language exchanges tend to benefit oral proficiency, fluency, colloquial vocabulary acquisition, and vernacular usage. A major benefit of language exchange is the exposure to the native speaker's culture. Understanding the culture of native speaker will help with understanding why and how the language is used. Another benefit is that you are in an friendly and informal environment, this means there is no pressure to get everything right as both speakers are trying to learn and understand. This also gives the learning environment a fun and productive atmosphere. By learning with native speakers each person will get a better understanding of the language as they are learning from someone who has knowledge and background in the language, whereas, learning from someone who has learnt the language later on in their life may not be correct in what they are teaching.
Another benefit is that people are learning faster when they have a one-on-one connection with the "teacher". Many people choose to learn one-on-one but struggle try to find a teacher. People like this are highly motivated to learn a new language. The native speakers whom are helping these people may feel a new sense of motivation since they are now responsible for teaching this person. 
One of the characteristics common to most Niger–Congo languages (the Atlantic–Congo languages) is the use of a noun class system. The most widely spoken Niger–Congo languages by number of native speakers are Yoruba, Igbo, Fula and Shona. The most widely spoken by number of speakers is Swahili.
Tanzania is a multilingual country. There are many languages spoken in the country, but no one language is spoken natively by a majority or a large plurality of the population. The Bantu Swahili language and English, the latter of which was inherited from colonial rule ("see Tanganyika Territory"), are widely spoken as lingua francas. They serve as working languages in the country, with Swahili being the official national language. There are more speakers of Swahili than of English in Tanzania.
Swahili, known as Kiswahili to its speakers, is used throughout large parts of East Africa and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo as a lingua franca, despite being the mother tongue of a relatively small ethnic group on the East African coast and nearby islands in the Indian Ocean. At least as early as the late 18th century, Swahili was used along trading and slave routes that extended west across Lake Tanganyika and into the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. Swahili rose in prominence throughout the colonial era, and has become the predominant African language of Tanzania and Kenya. Some ethnic groups now speak Swahili more often than their mother tongues, and many, especially in urban areas, choose to raise their children with Swahili as their first language, leading to the possibility that several smaller East African languages will fade away as Swahili transitions from being a regional lingua franca to a regional first language.
The following verbs have irregular imperatives, regular forms may be heard, particularly by non-native speakers and particularly in Kenya, and regular forms may be interpreted as less polite:
The verb "-acha" may informally be given the imperative form wacha (pl. wacheni).
Imran is a fluent speaker in many languages, including Urdu, Hindi, Tamil and almost all the regional ones. Foreign languages that he is shown to be fluent in include English, Arabic, Persian, Swahili, Shakrali (a fictional language in the series), French, Russian, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and German. He is also capable of assuming native accents. It is not stated when or how he learnt all of them, but it can be assumed that most of these were learnt by him during his time in London.
Because many Dhaiso people have intermarried with people of different languages, the language is not being passed on to newer generations (most primary-school age children do not speak Dhaiso) as there is a need for wider communication. Because of this need, most Dhaiso are fluent in Swahili. Swahili is the national language and the language of trade along the coast. For a majority of Dhaiso, Swahili is their mother tongue. and many also say they can speak other neighboring languages like Digo or Sambaa. In 1999, with 5,000 speakers, Dhaiso was considered by UNESCO to be a "definitely endangered" language.
The Mwani language, or Kimwani (pronounced ) is a Bantu language spoken on the coast of the Cabo Delgado Province of Mozambique, including the Quirimbas Islands. Although it shares high lexical similarity (60%) with Swahili, it is not intelligible with it. It is spoken by around 120,000 people (including 20,000 who use it as their second language). Speakers of "Kimwani" also use Portuguese, (the official language of Mozambique), Swahili and Makhuwa language. "Kiwibo", the dialect of the Island of Ibo is the prestige dialect. "Kimwani" (sometimes spelled as "Quimuane") is also called "Mwani" (sometimes spelled as: "Mwane, Muane") and "Ibo". According to Anthony P. Grant: 'Kimwani of northern Mozambique appears to be the result of imperfect shift towards Swahili several centuries ago by speakers of Makonde, and Arends et al. suggest it might turn out to be a Makonde–Swahili mixed language.
Kutchi-Swahili, or Cutchi-Swahili, is a Swahili-based creole spoken among the Indian population of East Africa. It is the native language of some Gujarati families from Zanzibar that have settled in the larger cities of mainland Tanzania and Kenya, and is used as a second language by others of the Indian community. It is derived from the Kutchi language of the Kutch district in Gujarat.
Lingala is used by over 10 million speakers throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a large part of the Republic of the Congo, as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic, although it has only about two million native speakers.[3] Its status is comparable to that of Swahili in eastern Africa.
Because of this orientalist exploration and interest in the Swahili culture and language, most of the theses made on the Swahili literature have been done outside of the native place.
The KiKAR lexicon took many borrowings from English and also from other Bantu languages. Many of the borrowings from English were words relating to military life. In particular words which described equipment, marksmanship, clothing and ranks as well as commands and numbers. Some English words were borrowed and restructured to fit more easily we Swahili phonotactics, for example "'bayoneti'" for "'bayonet'". Sometimes English words were combined with Swahili words in phrases like "'kupiga miss'" which meant "'to miss a target'". Many words taken directly from Swahili gained a more specifically military meaning, for example "'kukamua'" which meant "'to wring/milk'" in Swahili meant "'to press'" in KiKAR or "'hivi hivi'" which meant "'haphazard'" in Swahili and "'upside-down'" in KiKAR. Words in KiKAR were also derived from other native African languages, for example "'manyatta'" which meant "'village'" in KiKAR and likely came from the Maasai word of the same spelling which meant "'a settlement for warriors or boys'". There were also words loaned from Arabic and Turkish via KiNubi (which some of the members of the KAR would have also spoken), for example "'maktab'" meaning "'office'" which comes from Arabic and "'korokon'" which meant "'guard room'" and which came from the KiNubi "'karakol'" which meant "'guard"' and was borrowed from Turkish.
Swahili phrases agree with nouns in a system of concord, but if the noun refers to a human, they accord with noun classes 1-2 regardless of their noun class. Verbs agree with the noun class of their subjects and objects; adjectives, prepositions and demonstratives agree with the noun class of their nouns. In Standard Swahili (Kiswahili sanifu), based on the dialect spoken in Zanzibar, the system is rather complex; however, it is drastically simplified in many local variants where Swahili is not a native language, such as in Nairobi. In non-native Swahili, concord reflects only animacy: human subjects and objects trigger a-, wa- and m-, wa- in verbal concord, while non-human subjects and objects of whatever class trigger i-, zi-. Infinitives vary between standard ku- and reduced i-.[39] ("Of" is animate wa and inanimate ya, za.)
Braj Kachru distinguishes countries where English is spoken with a three circles model. In his model, the "inner circle" countries are countries with large communities of native speakers of English, "outer circle" countries have small communities of native speakers of English but widespread use of English as a second language in education or broadcasting or for local official purposes, and "expanding circle" countries are countries where many learners learn English as a foreign language. Kachru bases his model on the history of how English spread in different countries, how users acquire English, and the range of uses English has in each country. The three circles change membership over time.
Countries with large communities of native speakers of English (the inner circle) include Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, where the majority speaks English, and South Africa, where a significant minority speaks English. The countries with the most native English speakers are, in descending order, the United States (at least 231 million), the United Kingdom (60 million), Canada (19 million), Australia (at least 17 million), South Africa (4.8 million), Ireland (4.2 million), and New Zealand (3.7 million). In these countries, children of native speakers learn English from their parents, and local people who speak other languages or new immigrants learn English to communicate in their neighbourhoods and workplaces. The inner-circle countries provide the base from which English spreads to other countries in the world.
The future tense is formed in Swahili with the prefix -ta-. The negative form is indicated simply by using the negative subject prefix, with -ta- being used here as well. A number of speakers, however, use -to- in the negative future. This may be derived by analogy from the "-to-" of the negative infinitive, and may also disambiguate between positive and negative where the only difference otherwise would be an "h-" at the beginning of the negative word. For example, "atakuja" "s/he will come" vs. "hatakuja" "s/he will not come" (or "hatokuja"). Because second language speakers in many areas have trouble with pronouncing and distinguishing /h/, the optional change from -ta- to -to- in the negative can provide a failsafe indication when a negative meaning is intended.
Unlike the vast majority of Niger-Congo languages,[30] Swahili lacks contrastive tone. As a result of that and the language's shallow orthography, Swahili is said to be the easiest African language for an English speaker to learn.[31]
The Nyanga language (native name "Kinyanga") is a language spoken by the Nyanga people in Kivu province, north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Speaker estimates range from 27,000 (Biebuyck & Matheene 1970) to 150,000 (1994 census). Many of the Nyanga speak Congo Swahili, the dominant regional lingua franca, as a second language. Nyanga is a Bantu language. Most of the (scarce) linguistic research conducted on Nyanga has been based on the materials published by Biebuyck and Mateene.
How a Catalan speaker's Spanish manifests depends heavily on individual sociolinguistic variables related to age, native language, and the differing environments of language use. It is therefore not a uniform variety with little variation. Many of the features listed below are present with very different frequencies in different speakers, and some of the features could be absent in many speakers (particularly those whose main native language is Spanish, who transfer fewer typical Catalan features).
Some 80 percent of approximately 49 million Tanzanians speak Swahili in addition to their first languages.[27] The five eastern provinces of the DRC are Swahili-speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese reportedly speak it.[28] Swahili speakers may number 120 to 150 million in total.[29]
Another frequent issue was the use of more formal vocabulary than that regularly used by native speakers. In 2006, "Macworld" reviewer Cyrus Farivar noted that his Persian CD used "khodrow" for "car", although most native speakers use a French loanword, "ma:sheen". The same course did not teach words that would be important to someone learning Persian, such as "bread" and "tea"; however, it very curiously included the word "elephant" in a basic vocabulary lesson. Perplexed by the question of why the word "elephant" would be taught in a language where it might never be used (there are not many elephants in Iran), Farivar called Rosetta Stone, Inc. He was told that the company makes four different picture sets: one for Western languages, another for Asian languages, and two sets unique to each Swahili and Latin. The Persian language CD was using the Western picture set, which explains why the images were not culturally relevant.
With between 50 – 100 million speakers, Swahili is lexiconically similar to other eastern Bantu languages such as Comorian which have differing levels of mutual intelligibility. Swahili is already used unofficially in many UN organizations as the United Nations Office at Nairobi, one of the four major UN global offices (in addition to offices in New York City, Vienna, and Geneva), is located in Nairobi, Kenya. The media branch of the UN, UN News (https://news.un.org/), already includes translations into Swahili.