Comorian (Shikomori, or Shimasiwa, the "language of islands") is the name given to a group of four Bantu languages spoken in the Comoro Islands, an archipelago in the southwestern Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar. It is named as one of the official languages of the Union of the Comoros in the Comorian constitution. Shimaore, one of the languages, is spoken on the disputed island of Mayotte, a French department claimed by Comoros.
Like Swahili, the Comorian languages are Sabaki languages, part of the Bantu language family. Each island has its own language, and the four are conventionally divided into two groups: the eastern group is composed of Shindzuani (spoken on Ndzuani) and Shimaore (Mayotte), while the western group is composed of Shimwali (Mwali) and Shingazija (Ngazidja). Although the languages of different groups are not usually mutually intelligible, only sharing about 80% of their lexicon, there is mutual intelligibility between the languages within each group, suggesting that Shikomori should be considered as two language groups, each including two languages, rather than four distinct languages.
Historically, the language was written in the Arabic-based Ajami script. The French colonial administration introduced the Latin script. In 2009 the current independent government decreed a modified version of the Latin script for official use.
It is the language of Umodja wa Masiwa, the national anthem.
History and classification
The first Bantu speakers arrived at the Comoros sometime between the 5th and 10th centuries, before the Shirazi Arabs.
Until the 1970s, it was considered a dialect or archaic form of Swahili. This was first proposed in 1871, when Kersten suggested it might be a mixture of Shingazija, Swahili, and Malagasy. In 1919 Johnston, referring to it as 'Komoro Islands Swahili - the dialect of 'Mohila' and 'the 'Mohella' language', suggested that, taken together with the other two dialects in the Comoros, it might be an ancient and corrupt form of Swahili. However, Ottenheimer et al. (1976) found this to not be the case. Instead, they classify Shimwali, as well as the other Comorian languages, as a separate language group from Swahili.
Shinzwani
Shinzwani was first noted by a South African missionary Reverend William Elliott in 1821 and 1822. During a 13-months' mission stay on the island of Anjouan he compiled a vocabulary and grammar of the language. Elliott included a 900-word vocabulary and provided 98 sample sentences in Shinzwani. He does not appear to have recognized noun- classes (of which there are at least six in Shinzwani) nor does he appear to have considered Shinzwani a Bantu language, only making a superficial connection to Swahili.
In 1909 two publications reaffirmed and clarified the distinctiveness of Shinzwani, Shingazija and Swahili. Struck published a word list which appeared to have been recorded by a Frenchman in Anjouan in 1856, identified the words as belonging to Shinzwani and noted some influence from Swahili.
In his Swahili Grammar, Sacleux cautioned that although Swahili was spoken in the Comoros it must not be confused with the native languages of the Comoros, Shinzwani and Shingazija. He said that while Swahili was mostly spoken in cities, the Comorian languages were widely spoken in the countryside.
Shingazija
Shingazija was not documented until 1869 when Bishop Edward Steere collected a word list and commented that he did not know which language family it belonged to. In 1870 Gevrey characterized both Shingazija and Shinzwani as the 'Souaheli des Comores' (Swahili of the Comoros) which was only a 'patois de celui de Zanzibar'. However, Kersten noted in 1871 that Shingazija was not at all like Swahili but was a separate Bantu language.
Torrend was the first to identify the difference between Shingazija and Shinzwani in 1891. He attempted to account for Shingazija by suggesting that it was a mixture of Shinzwani and Swahili.
|-----
! Upper Case
| A || Ɓ || B || C || Ɗ || D
| E || F || G || H || I
| J || K || L || M || N
| O || P
| R || S || T || U || V
| W || Y || Z
|-----
! Lower Case
| a || ɓ || b || c || ɗ
| d || e || f || g || h || i
| j || k || l || m || n
| o || p
| r || s || t || u || v || w
| y || z
|-----
! IPA
| || || || || || ||
| || || ||
| || || || ||
| ||
| || || || || ||
| ||
|}
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center; vertical-align: middle;"
|+ List of digraphs in Comorian
|-
!Digraphs
|dh || dj || dr || dz ||gh || ny || sh || pv || th || tr || ts
|-
! IPA
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|}
Note: In Shimaore, the digraphs " vh " and " bv " are used for representing the phoneme .
The 20th century marked the start of a process of orthographic reform and standardization across the Muslim world. This process included standardizing, unifying, and clarifying the Arabic script in most places, ditching the Arabic script in favour of Latin or Cyrillic in others in places such as Soviet Turkistan and Soviet Caucasus, to Turkey and Kurdistan, to Indonesia and Malaysia, to the Eastern African coast (Swahili Ajami) and Comoros.
The mantle of standardization and improvement of Arabic-based orthography in Comoros was carried by the literaturist Said Kamar-Eddine (1890-1974) in 1960. Only two decades before, in the 1930s and 1940s, Swahili literaturists such as Sheikh el Amin and Sheikh Yahya Ali Omar had developed the Swahili Arabic alphabet as well.
Numerals
Numerals in Comorian follow the noun. If the number is 1 through 5 or 8, it must agree with the class of its noun.
{| class="wikitable"
|+Numerals
!Number
!Comorian
!Num.
!Comorian
|-
!1
|oja/muntsi
!6
|sita
|-
!2
|ili/mbili
!7
|saba
|-
!3
|raru/ndraru
!8
|nane
|-
!4
|nne
!9
|shendra
|-
!5
|tsano/ntsanu
!10
|kumi/kume
|}
Demonstratives
There are three demonstratives: One that refers to a proximate object, a non-proximate object, and an object that was previously mentioned in the conversation.
!
!Set 1
!Set 2
!Set 3
(Shingazija and Shimwali only)
|-
!1sg
|ni-
|tsi-
|-m-
|-
!2sg
|u-
|hu-/u-
|-o-
|-
!3sg
|a-
|ha-/a-
|-u-
|-
!1pl
| colspan="3" |ri-
|-
!2pl
| colspan="3" |m-/mu-
|-
!3pl
| colspan="3" |wa-
|}
In Proto-Sabaki, the 2sg and 2sg subject markers were *ku and *ka, respectively. However, the *k was weakened to h in Shingazija and further to Ø in all other dialects.
Verbs can be negated by adding the prefix ka-. However, occasionally other morphemes of the verb may take on different meanings when the negative prefix is added, such as in the following example, where the suffix -i, usually the past tense, takes on the present habitual meaning when it is in a negative construction.
The present progressive uses the prefix si-/su-, the future tense uses tso-, and the conditional uses a-tso-.There are two past tense constructions in Comorian.