Apart from Kingwana (a lingua franca in Congo) and Kingazija (the main lingua franca in the Comoros), the other dialects are hardly evident in present-day East Africa. And whereas Tanzanian Swahili is fairly uniform (apart from the fact that many Zanzibaris and some coastal inhabitants on mainland Tanzania tend to use more Arabic words than up-country Tanzanians do), in Congo and to a lesser extent in Kenya, there are some interesting regional differences.
In Congo words from local Congolese languages have also been assimilated and the main linguistic variants are: in the south-eastern provinces (Haut-Katanga, Lualaba, Haut-Lomami, Tanganyika), and in the north-eastern provinces (Sud-Kivu, Nord-Kivu, Maniema, Ituri and Tshopo). In Kenya there is a difference between the coastal and the so-called "up-country Swahili". The latter is less grammatical. However, in many areas it is gradually being replaced by Standard Swahili. What's more, East Africans mix Swahili with English but many Central Africans mix it with lots of French. For example the Central Africans would use French even to tell the time, because Swahili time (as used across East Africa) is largely unknown there. This signifies the fact that Central African Swahili did not evolve substantially.
| English | ||
|---|---|---|
| Where is he/she! | ||
| Come here! | ||
| car | ||
| my friend | ||
| He/She is ill. | ||
| tea without milk |