Swati Language

Swati (also known as siSwati or Swazi) is a language of the Bantu family, part of the Nguni group. It is the most widely spoken language in Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland), and is also spoken in Mpumalanga province in South Africa and in parts of Mozambique.

In Eswatini, both Swati and English are official languages. In South Africa, Swati is one of the official languages designated in the constitution. It is therefore used in education, media, and administration.

Relationship to other languages

The Nguni group also includes Zulu, Xhosa, and Ndebele. Swati shares close lexical and grammatical ties with these languages, particularly Zulu, and speakers of these languages can achieve some degree of mutual intelligibility. However, Swati has distinct phonetic and phonological features that set it apart.

Grammar

Like other Bantu languages, Swati uses a noun class system marked by prefixes. These prefixes affect the verb, demonstratives, and possessives within the sentence, a phenomenon known as grammatical concord. Verbs are marked by prefixes and suffixes that indicate tense, aspect, and mood.

Sound and writing

Swati uses the Latin alphabet. The orthography in current use developed from the work of missionaries and schools beginning in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are minor differences between the writing conventions used in Eswatini and those in South Africa.