| Bravanese | |
|---|---|
| Mwiini | |
| Chimwiini | |
| Native to | Somalia |
| Region | Barawa |
| Ethnicity | Bravanese |
Native speakers | (40,000 cited 1992)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | (included in Kiswahili [swh]) |
| Glottolog | chim1312 |
G.412[2] | |
| ELP | Mwini |
Bravanese, also called Chimwiini (ChiMwini, Mwiini, Mwini) or Chimbalazi,[3] is a Bantu language related to Swahili spoken by the Bravanese people, who are the predominant inhabitants of Barawa, or Brava, in Somalia.[4] Maho (2009) considers it a distinct dialect, and it has been classified as a Northern Dialect of Swahili.[5] However, it strongly distinguishes itself from standard Swahili under all linguistic considerations.[6]
Due to the ongoing Somali Civil War, most speakers have left the region and are scattered throughout the world in ex-refugee immigrant communities in places such as Columbus and Atlanta in the United States, London and Manchester in the United Kingdom, and Mombasa, Kenya. It has fewer than 15,000 speakers.[7]
Bravanese may have once served as a regional lingua franca due to the key coastal location of Barawa. One piece of linguistic evidence for this comes from morphological reduction. For example, it has a three-way tense system, which is simpler than that of neighboring Bantu dialects historically spoken in Somalia.[5]