How many Swahili words come from Arabic?

Estimates commonly place around a third of Swahili vocabulary as Arabic in origin, the legacy of over a thousand years of Indian Ocean trade and Islamic influence along the East African coast.

How does the tool detect a loanword?

It matches each word against a curated dictionary of well-documented Arabic loanwords in Swahili, including Swahilised forms such as kitabu from kitab and safari from safar. It does not guess from spelling.

Why are some Swahili spellings different from Arabic?

Swahili adapted Arabic words to its own sound system and grammar, often adding final vowels, so kitab became kitabu and waqt became wakati. The dictionary stores these Swahilised forms.

Are days, time and numbers included?

Yes. Many time and counting words such as saa (hour), dakika (minute), and several numbers are Arabic in origin and appear in the dictionary.

Does my text leave the browser?

No. Matching happens against the built-in list entirely on your device. Your text is never uploaded or stored.

Swahili Arabic Loanword Detector

Swahili, the great lingua franca of East Africa, grew at the meeting point of Bantu Africa and the Arab and Persian trading world of the Indian Ocean. Over a thousand years of commerce and Islamic contact deposited a deep layer of Arabic loanwords — words like kitabu (book), duka (shop), habari (news) and saa (hour/clock). Arabic is by far the largest source of borrowed words in Swahili. This tool scans your Kiswahili text and highlights those Arabic loanwords, showing the likely Arabic source for each.

How it works

The detector tokenises your text and looks each word up (case-insensitively) in a curated dictionary of documented Arabic loanwords. The dictionary stores the Swahilised spellings that the language actually uses, since Arabic words were adapted to Swahili phonology — typically by adding a final vowel:

kitabu  ← kitāb (book)     safari  ← safar (journey)
saa     ← sāʿa (hour)      wakati  ← waqt (time)
habari  ← khabar (news)    duka    ← dukkān (shop)
hesabu  ← ḥisāb (maths)    rafiki  ← rafīq (friend)

Each detected word is reported with its Arabic source and how often it appears, so you can see how heavily a passage draws on Arabic-derived vocabulary.

Tips and example

Paste Nilinunua kitabu dukani and the tool flags kitabu (← kitāb) and duka within dukani is the locative form, so the base loanword duka is what the dictionary stores — while leaving native Bantu words like nilinunua alone.

A high count is entirely normal: these Arabic loans are full, everyday members of Swahili. Use the tool to study borrowing patterns, build vocabulary lists, or trace the roots of words you use daily. The dictionary covers common, well-attested loans, so rarer or very modern borrowings may not be detected.

Swahili Arabic Loanword Detector

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How it works

Tips and example