La llengua del dret a Tanzania

Resum

Tanzania is one of the few African states where the official language, in this case Swahili, is African. Despite the initial impetus, the diffusion of Swahili through all areas of usage has stagnated in recent years, and it is precisely in the legal field --one of the first into which Swahili was introduced-- that the most striking contradictions are to be seen: a legal system based on the English system, yet almost all the vocabulary of which is borrowed from Arabic; law courts in which Swahili is the most commonly used language, yet the language of the Faculty of Law is English; laws that Parliament debates in Swahili, yet are enacted in English. All this is exacerbated by problems with the approval of new vocabulary and the "official silence" surrounding the diffusion of Swahili since the resignation of President Nyerere.