Abstract
Most of the people of coastal East Africa were ancestors of the modern Swahili. The
occurrence of Swahili loans in unrelated neighbouring languages is quite frequent. The
influence of Arabic loans, mainly via Swahili, was not confined to East Africa, or to
Nilotic and Bantu languages (particularly Mijikenda and Pokomo), but also to Central
African languages like Kikongo, Lingala up to the Sango. This is clear because Islam
penetrated mainly and exclusively through Swahili speaking people and not directly
from Arabic, so all the words dealing with the new religion, and which so abundantly
arrived in West African languages, were not necessarily lent. In this paper, a research
in progress is presented. It started one year ago by collecting Arabic loans in languages
spoken in East and Central Africa. The main object of investigation is to organise a data
base similar to what done for West Africa, using the same methodology. Up to now
a few dictionaries and other sources on these languages have been consulted: Acholi,
Ankole, Anywa, Ateso, Bari, Bemba, Bende, Dholuo, Kikamba, Kikongo, Kikuyu, Kiluba,
Kiw’oso, Kuria, Lega, Lingala, Lomongo, Lotuxo, Luena, Luganda, Lunyankole, Lunyoro,
Macua, Madi, Matengo, Ngombe, Pokomo, Pokot, Rendille, Shona, Swahili, Xhosa and
Zande, but this article is dealing with Nilo-Saharan languages only.
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