Bravanese dialect

Bravanese, also called Chimwiini (ChiMwini, Mwiini, Mwini) or Chimbalazi,[2] is a Bantu language related to Swahili spoken by the Bravanese people, who are the predominant inhabitants of Barawa, or Brava, in Somalia.[3] Maho (2009) considers it a distinct dialect, and it has been classified as a Northern Dialect of Swahili.[4] However, it strongly distinguishes itself from standard Swahili under all linguistic considerations.[5]

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.[6]

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.[4]