Pokomo language

Pokomo
Kipfokomo
Native to	Kenya
Region	Tana River District
Native speakers	95,000 (2009 census)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Northeast Coast Bantu Sabaki Pokomo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	pkb
Glottolog	poko1261[2]
Guthrie code	E.71[3]

Pokomo (Kipfokomo) is a Bantu language spoken primarily along the East African coast near Tana River in the Tana River District by the Pokomo people of Kenya. Kipfokomo language originated from "Kingozi" the language, which Kiswahili was built from. "Kingozi" language is the precursor of Kiswahili. Pokomos are the only tribe in the world that speak "Kingozi" and sometimes are referred to as wangozi because they used to wear skins (Ngozi). All adult speakers of Pokomo are bilingual in Swahili, East Africa's lingua franca.

There is high of lexical similarity between other languages like Mvita (63%), Amu (61%), Mrima (60%), Kigiryama (59%), Chidigo (58%) or Bajun (57%).

References

1. Pokomo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Pokomo". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
3. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online