Swahili is a Bantu language native to the east coast of Africa, primarily in Tanzania, Kenya, Comoros, Mayotte, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Bajuni Islands of Somalia, northern Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, and Madagascar. Despite belonging to different language family groups, Swahili and Arabic share a lot of common words. While the core of the Swahili vocabulary comes from the native Bantu language family, it contains many words derived from Arabic, aside from the terms which are related to religion.

In this video, we compare some of the common words between Swahili (Kiswahili) and Arabic (العربية) with Abdilahi and Nagib Munir, Swahili speakers from Tanzania and Kenya, respectively, and Hassan and Mohammad, Arabic speakers from Saudi Arabia.

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Arabic is a Central Semitic language and has official/national status Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, SADR, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania (Zanzibar), Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

Swahili is part of the Sabaki branch of the Bantu languages, which also includes Ilwana (Malakote), Pokomo, Mijikenda, Comorian, , and Mwani. Much of Swahili's Bantu vocabulary has cognates in the Pokomo, Taita, and Mijikenda languages. Aside from Arabic, Swahili also contains words from other languages such as Persian, Hindustani (Urdu / Hindi), Portuguese, and Malagasy.