Swahili (also called Kiswahili; see below for a discussion of the nomenclature) is a Bantu language widely spoken in East Africa. Swahili is the mother tongue of the Swahili people who inhabit a 1500 km stretch of the East African coast from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique. There are approximately five million  first language speakers and fifty million second language speakers. Swahili has become a lingua franca for East Africa and surrounding areas.

The name Swahili comes from the plural of the Arabic word sahel or sawahil meaning "boundary" or "coast" (used here to mean "coastal language"). Sahel is also the word used for the border zone of the Sahara. The incorporation of the final i is likely for phonetic reasons as it is consistent with the tendency to end words with vowel sounds.