By the late 19th century, a caravan trade extended from the Indian and Atlantic littorals through the hinterlands of south central Africa. Industrial commodities—guns, cloths, iron, and beads—were exchanged for ivory, slaves, beeswax, and rubber. Along the trade routes and in trading centers, words spread to describe new commodities, new peoples, new trading customs, and new forms of political power. These Wanderwörter originated in the languages of the coastal traders, in particular in Portuguese and Kiswahili. When the diverse vernaculars of the south central African interior were transcribed by colonial-era missionaries into “tribal” languages, such wandering words were incorporated into these languages, often disguised by distinctive orthographies. Other words were left out of dictionaries and political vocabularies, replaced by supposedly more authentic and archaic words. Examining these wandering words provides a window into linguistic dynamism and political-economic change prior to European conquest.
