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Swazi (or Swati or Siswati) is a language in the Nguni group of Bantu (Guthrie S40). (Webbook)
Ethnologue lists the classification as: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern, Narrow Bantu, Central, S, Nguni (S.40)
'Siswati' is the Swati name, 'Swazi' is the Zulu name. The people are highly educated. Christian, traditional religion. (Ethnologue)
Swazi is spoken in Swaziland and South Africa. (Webbook)
According to Ethnologue:
According to Ethnologue:
Swazi is the national language of Swaziland and an official language there and in South Africa.(Webbook and Ethnologue)
According to Ethnologue, in Swaziland, the literacy rate in first language is high, the language is taught in all national schools and used in newspapers.
Swazi has a standardized Latin-based orthography. It does not use extended characters.
According to the Geonames "Unicode test page...: Swati alphabet" http://www.geonames.de/alphrs.html#ssw , the alphabet is the same as that used in English (although there is no explanation if this applies to both Swaziland and South Africa)
A sample text is shown on the "Language Museum" site: http://www.language-museum.com/s/swati.htm
Latin fonts without extended ranges (such as commonly used for English) will suffice.
An English keyboard or the South African keyboard http://translate.org.za/content/view/24/41/ can be used (verify re the English keyboard)
The South African language site "Batho Portal" http://www.sediba.org.za/ has a section on & in Siswati.
Wikipedia in Swati at http://ss.wikipedia.org/ (apparently just the site has been reserved)
The OpenOffice suite of software applications has been localized in Swati by Translate.org.za of South Africa. See http://translate.org.za/content/view/17/54/ . No information on any localization for Swaziland.
Swati English Dictionary / sí-Ngísi sí-chazamagâma (word list - verify language) http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/translation/Swati/
AfricanLanguages.com "Siswati (Swati)" page http://www.africanlanguages.com/swati/
Open-Tran.eu supports Swazi http://ss.open-tran.eu
This is a cross-border Southern African language that could have localized versions for Swaziland as well as South Africa - though the differences apart from a few minor locale issues would probably be minor. In any event, if they are based on a common version - in this case the one done by Translate.org.za - that would make it easier for the broader user community.
Dwyer, David (1997), Webbook of African Languages, http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html (page on "Swazi," http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Swazi_root.html )
SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Swati," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ssw
SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp
U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
Wikipedia, "Swati language," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swati_language
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