SWAHILI FORUM 26 (2019): 205-239 SPECIAL ISSUE: Variation in Swahili, ed. by Daisuke Shinagawa & Nico Nassenstein ON THE VARIABILITY OF KISWAHILI IN BUJUMBURA (BURUNDI) NICO NASSENSTEIN The variety of Kiswahili spoken in Bujumbura (Burundi) is central to the present sociolinguistic and structural analysis. Swahili in Burundi looks back upon a long history: first having been intro- duced by the German colonial administration, it has turned into a trade language along both the naval and non-naval trade routes between Uvira (DR Congo), Kigoma (Tanzania) and Bujumbura. Initially stigmatized as a language of ruthless urban rioters in the post-conflict era, it has increas- ingly gained popularity in Bujumbura, and is nowadays considered as one of the languages of Bu- rundi, alongside Kirundi, French and English. Especially in the lively neighborhoods of the big- gest city, where there is a pulsating nightlife, Kiswahili can be heard in many interactions, and of- ten reveals influence from Kirundi, French, English and sometimes even Lingala. Structurally, the Swahili of Bujumbura combines elements from East Coast Swahili (ECS) as spoken in Tanzania and from Congo Swahili regiolects such as Kivu Swahili, and reveals a high degree of variability, depending upon interlocutors, contexts of interaction and communicative purpose. In this contribu- tion, apart from summarizing the sociohistorical background and suggesting sociolinguistic ap- proaches to grasping the high degree of variability in Kiswahili in Burundi, I discuss the most sali- ent phonological and morphosyntactic patterns of variation and explain their situational distribution. 1. “On a toujours eu le Swahili…”: Swahili in Burundi 1 Kiswahili, a Bantu language of group G40, represents the most widespread macrocontinuum of mutually intelligible languages and varieties across East Africa, with a long tradition of documentation from the early 19th century on. Studies with an interest in the standardized varieties from Kenya and Tanzania (Ashton 1944, Polomé 1967, Schadeberg 1992) have rare- ly included the Kiswahili from the adjoining areas, which are often classified as non- standard(ized) varieties (see also the introduction to this volume for a discussion of related 1 The present paper is based on research on “peripheral” Kiswahili varieties as diffused in DR Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi between 2010 and 2016. Field research was carried out in Bujumbura in February 2014, and the main data corpus was collected with Burundian speakers in Kampala, Uganda, shortly after their arri- val in 2016-2017. Warm thanks go to my friend Eloi Niragira for his help, for sharing his knowledge with me and for the fruitful and inspiring fieldwork sessions. I also thank his friends and relatives. A preliminary draft of this paper was presented at the Institute for African Studies & Egyptology, University of Cologne, in De- cember 2016. I am indebted to my colleague Daisuke Shinagawa for his interest and for his cooperation in this work, as well as for his outstanding kindness. Two reviewers are thanked for their many detailed comments on an earlier version of this paper. Moreover, I warmly thank Mary Chambers for improving my English. Freder- ik Weck is thanked for formatting this paper. All remaining mistakes are my own. The French title of Sec- tion 1 reads ‘we have always had Swahili...’, which was uttered as the initial statement of a speaker I inter- viewed on the long historical presence of Swahili in Burundi. The varieties in DR Congo are referred to as ‘Congo Swahili’, ‘Western Swahili’ or, when denoting the variety spoken across the border in the Kivu Prov- inces, ‘Kivu Swahili’. They are at times used interchangeably in this contribution.