Karibu Twitter! (Welcome to Twitter!)
Swahili has made history by becoming the first African language to be officially recognized by Twitter.
Ndio, ukweli mtupu huu. (Yes, very true).
The social media platform will now be able to offer translations for the language spoken by more than 100 million people across East and Central Africa.
The recognition of Swahili comes after months of rallying from East Africans on Twitter, who often coined hashtags in the language to make topics trend.
Initially, Twitter was not able to recognize Swahili, as it always described Swahili tweets as Indonesian and made incoherent translations.
This caused an outcry among Twitter users in the region, who then began a campaign on the same platform under that tags #SwahiliIsNotIndonesian and #TwitterRecognizeSwahili.
Twitter is a widely popular platform particularly in Kenya, as users often use it to make topics trend and highlight news items that failed to capture the attention of the mainstream media.
The new move by Twitter has been widely hailed by East Africans using the platform, some of whom expressed their joy there.
Here are some reactions;
Since kiswahili is now recognized by twitter, we can now tweet in Swahili 24/7
— Dari Dari (@alekidariusz) May 10, 2018
Ok, so if I write (or receive) a tweet in Swahili, Twitter will not prompt me to translate it to Indonesian?….Good move recognizing Swahili as a mature, indipendent lingo. Thanks @TwitterSupport @TwitterLive @Twitter
— Samuel Waragu (@waragusamuel) May 10, 2018
https://twitter.com/Monarebekah/status/994615483403001856
