Editing Swahili language (section)

==Orthography==
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{{See also|Swahili Ajami}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 105-DOA0075, Deutsch-Ostafrika, Einheimisches Mädchen.jpg|thumb|upright|Swahili in Arabic script on the clothes of a girl in [[German East Africa]] ({{Circa}} early 1900s)]]
Swahili is now written in the Latin alphabet. There are a few [[digraph (orthography)|digraphs]] for native sounds, ''ch'', ''sh'', ''ng{{'}}'' and ''ny''; ''q'' and ''x'' are not used,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/swahili/guide/alphabet.shtml |title=A Guide to Swahili – The Swahili alphabet |publisher=BBC |access-date=25 December 2019 |archive-date=12 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200212181115/http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/swahili/guide/alphabet.shtml |url-status=live }}</ref> ''c'' is not used apart from the digraph ''ch'', unassimilated English loans and, occasionally, as a substitute for ''k'' in advertisements. There are also several digraphs for Arabic sounds, which many speakers outside of ethnic Swahili areas have trouble differentiating.

The language used to be primarily written in the [[Swahili Ajami|Ajami script]], which is an Arabic script. Much literature was produced in this script. With the introduction of Latin, the use of Ajami script has been diminished significantly. However, the language continues to have a tradition of being written in Arabic script.<ref name="Mutiua"/> Starting from the later half of the 19th century, continuing into the 20th century, and going on in the 21st century, a process of "Swahilization" of the Arabic Script has been underway by Swahili scribes and scholars. The first of such attempts was done by [[:sw:Mwalimu Sikujua|Mwalimu Sikujua]], a scholar and poet from [[Mombasa]].<ref name="Omar">Omar, Y. A., & Frankl, P. J. L. (1997). An Historical Review of the Arabic Rendering of Swahili Together with Proposals for the Development of a Swahili Writing System in Arabic Script (Based on the Swahili of Mombasa). Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 7(01), 55–71. doi:[https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186300008312 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186300008312]</ref> However, the spread of a standardized indigenous variation of Arabic script for Swahili was hampered by the colonial takeover of East Africa by [[the United Kingdom]] and [[Germany]]. The usage of Arabic script was suppressed in [[German East Africa]] and to a lesser extent in [[Kenya Colony|British East Africa]]. Nevertheless, well into the 1930s and 1940s, rural literacy rate in Arabic script as well as a local preference to write Swahili in the Arabic script (an unmodified version as opposed to proposals such as that of Mwalimu Sikujua) was relatively high.<ref name="Omar"/> There were also differences in orthographic conventions between cities and authors and over the centuries, some quite precise but others different enough to cause difficulties with intelligibility. Thus despite a lack of official governmental backing, attempts at standardization and Swahilization of the Arabic script continued into the 20th century.