Somali was taught for the first time at the University of Gothenburg from 2008 to 2011, when courses in Somali as a foreign language were offered at the beginner's level. Since 2014 we offer a series of courses for Somali mother tongue speakers, and since 2019 we once again offer courses in Somali as a foreign language at the beginner's level, this time taught in English.

All our courses
Flowchart showing our courses in Somali as a foreign language
Flowchart showing our courses in Somali for mother tongue speakers
Flödesschema som visar våra kurser i somaliska för modersmålstalare
Teaching and reference materials in Somali prepared at University of Gothenburg
Other textbooks, reference grammars and dictionaries
Somali language corpora

The position of Somali in Sweden

The most important reason for offering courses in Somali is the large interest in and need for knowledge about the Somali language and the Somali culture, as the number of Somali speakers in Sweden now exceeds 100,000, i.e. 1% of the total population. Approximately 68,680 of these individuals were born in Somalia, together with Somaliland and Puntland, and about 38,150 have at least one parent who is a native of Somalia (Statistics Sweden, 31 December 2018). Further native Somali speakers in Sweden were born in the Somali-speaking regions of the neighbouring countries Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, or in some other part of the world.

In the winter of 2018/19, about 21,115 children in grades 1‒9, or 2% of all schoolchildren, declared that they speak Somali. This makes Somali the third largest language in Swedish schools after Swedish and Arabic. Approximately 16,070 of the Somali-speaking children participated in mother tongue instruction. This participation rate of 76% is the highest among all languages taught as a mother tongue (cf. Swedish National Agency for Education, Tabell 8 A, tab Tabell 8 B-C).

The position of Somali among other languages

Somali is spoken in Somalia, but also in south-eastern Djibouti, eastern and south-eastern Ethiopia as well as eastern Kenya. With its aproximately 26 million speakers worldwide, it is the ninth largest langauge in Africa and the fifth largest language in the Afro-Asiatic language family. The four larger languages in that family are Arabic, Hausa, Oromo and Amharic. We also find the somewhat smaller, but quite well known langauges Hebrew, Tigrinya and different Berber languages in the Afro-Asiatic family. Among these languages, Somali is most closely related to Oromo, which is mainly spoken in Ethiopia, but also to some extent in Kenya. They both belong to the Cushitic branch within the Afro-Asiatic language family.

The position of Somali in Somali society

It was not until the 21 October 1972 that Somali authorities proclaimed Somali as the official language of the country. The actual use of Somali started three months later, on 21 January 1973. At the same time, it was decided that Somali was going to be written exclusively with Latin characters. Previously, Latin, Arabic and a few different indigenous sets of characters had been in use.

The introduction of Somali in schools and administration was carried out in just a few months thanks to extensive preparations and intensive courses for state employees. A Somali language commission consisting of specialists in various subjects had already been preparing school textbooks for a couple of years, and some books had even been printed before Somali was proclaimed the official language of the country. An intensive literacy campaign for the adult part of the population was also carried out under the slogan 'If you can't read, learn it! If you can read, teach it!'

For almost two decades extensive efforts to standardise, consolidate and develop the Somali language were carried out, increasing its status as it was introduced within several new domains of the Somali society. Unfortunately, however, much of this work has fallen into oblivion due to the protracted conflicts that have struck the country as well as the fact that many schools are today private and the teaching is often conducted in English or Arabic.