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Promoting Kiswahili: Why we need more words for roads
Kijazi Interchange. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- Kiswahili did not grow in a situation where roads were being constructed and reconstructed. Thus the dearth of words related to roads.
In November 2021, at its 41st Session in Paris, the General Conference of UNESCO declared July 7th World Kiswahili Language Day. According to Professor Kennedy Gastorn, former Tanzanian’s Permanent Representative to the UN headquarters in New York, the day was chosen because on 7 July 1954, the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), the ruling party of then Tanganyika, led by Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, declared Swahili as an important tool in the fight for independence.
Already in the 1950s, the United Nations established the Kiswahili language unit of United Nations Radio, and today Kiswahili is the only African language within the Directorate of the Global Communications at the United Nations.
The 2023 edition of the World Kiswahili Language Day was celebrated under the theme “Unleashing Kiswahili’s Potential in the Digital Era”.
Clearly, Tanzania can rightfully claim of be the cradle of Kiswahili. This carries responsibility that we must be at the fore front of promoting the growth of the Swahili vocabulary to inform and be informed by the current era, characterized by super highways of exchanging information.
In an earlier article in this column, we highlighted the need to have Kiswahili talking the real estate language. In this piece, we highlight areas where Kiswahili must grow by leaps and bounds to explain what is happening in urban areas particularly, street naming.
As we know, the government took a major street naming and house numbering exercise, partly in preparation of the 2022 Population and Housing Census. This is now helping in the location of people and property.
Nevertheless, it is clear that we do not have many words in Kiswahili that help to give a picture of the nature of the road in question. The most common words used are: “barabara” and “mtaa”. Yet in English, there are some 70 words that are related to the nature of the road. There are also more than 400 words related to road.
Thus Kiswahili has a lot of catching up to do. Languages explain the circumstances in which they develop. Kiswahili did not grow in a situation where roads were being constructed and reconstructed. Thus the dearth of words related to roads.
If one talks of a highway, a motorway, a carriageway, an autobahn, an express way, roadway, interstate, artery, or, a freeway one is referring to huge roads joining criss-crossing the countryside and joining cities. In Kiswahili, all these would be known as “barabara”, a term also used for smaller roads and streets.
Within an urban area, a difference is made between “streets” and “roads”. A “road” is any way that connects two points. “Streets” are public ways which have buildings on either side. Avenues, meanwhile, have the same attributes as streets but run perpendicular to them. A boulevard is a broad avenue in a city, usually having areas at the sides or centre for trees, grass, or flowers, as is part of Samora Machel Avenue in Dar es Salaam.
A “high street” or “main street” means the major commercial street in a town or neighbourhood. It is the primary business street of a city, town, or village. It implies that it is the focal point for business, especially shopping. It also usually has the highest land values in the neighbourhood.
A similar name is “thoroughfare” which means a main road in a town or city which usually has shops along it and a lot of traffic.
A lane is a narrow road. It could also be known as an alley. A lane is also one of the parts of a large road such as a motorway, which has more than one line of traffic going in each direction. The fast lane is usually the inner one.
A “shunpike” is a side road used to avoid the toll on or the speed and traffic of a superhighway.
Within a neighbourhood, one could get an idea of the nature of the road from the name. A crescent, for example, means a road with a shape of the new moon. You could go enter it at one point, go round and come back at another point.
On the other hand, a cul-de-sac means there is no through way. You have to come back the way you went.
A “driveway” means a short road or paved area leading from a public road to a house or garage.
“Access” means a road that is dedicated to lead to a certain destination: Port access or airport access, for example.
A “drive”, is a winding road that has its route shaped by natural features such as a river, lake or mountain. In Dar es Salaam we have the Toure Drive and Kenyatta Drive, both related to the Ocean. A “corniche” is a road cut into the edge of a cliff, especially one running along a coast.
A turnpike is road with fee or toll gates. A by-pass, is a road specifically designed and routed to avoid certain areas. The Dodoma bypass means you need not drive through Dodoma if you have no business there.
Other names for various types of roads include: way, route, pike, pass, trail, path, corridor, track, close, place, mews, and by-street.
With all the variations on the nature of roads alluded to above, we need more words to describe roads in Kiswahili besides “barabara” and “mtaa”.
