Below are listed publications on the Comoro Islands which have appeared since the publication of the extensive Comoros bibliography in Ottenheimer & Ottenheimer 1994 (& online at: http:/ /www.ksu.edu/sasw/comoros/combibl.cornoro).

The aim of this paper is to show that Swahili has several strategies to resolve verbal agreement with conjoined noun phrases. In section 2, I give a brief summary of the situation as depicted in grammatical descriptions of Swahili. I then present a number of examples - mainly taken from Muhammed Said Abdulla`s (1976) novel Mwana wa Yungi hulewa - illustrating different strategies of agreement with conjoined NPs. In section 4, I present an analysis of one of the strategies discussed and argue that the choice of different strategies is not only based on dialect or speaker variation, but rather can be related to information structure and the dynamics of interpretation.

`The Rosetta Stone Language Library` is a language learning software developed by the American company Fairfield Language Technologies which allows users to learn a foreign language with their computer without the aid of an instructor. The program promises its users they can learn a language faster and with more ease than ever before, without having to learn vocabulary or grammatical rules. Once having completed Levels I and II, learners should be able to make themselves understood in the new language using a basic vocabulary of roughly 3000 words. Both these levels are to be completed within a time frame of one to two years, and the results should be the equivalent of five years of conventional school instruction. Since 1993, a Swahili language course has been featured in The Rosetta Stone for which only Level I is currently available. With regard to the Swahili course, it must be asked if this design can work with a class language just as it does with an Indo-European gender language. The second question addresses the cultural adequacy of the contexts, or more specifically, of cultural knowledge, which must not be excluded from modern language instruction.

The editors ofSwahili Forum have decided to revive the former bibliographical service with issueing a first follow-up list within the present No. VII of Swahili Forum. The following titles do certainly not cover all the Swahili-related writings of the years since 1993, but could be seen as a new starter, which might create appetite to continue with a bibliographical section. Eventually this could be completed for the past seven years within the forthcoming issues. The following bibliography contains titles which were rather randomly collected by the present editors. The articles which appeared in Swahili Forum I/1994 - VI/1999 are excluded from this list but await documentation in an extra-list, which is forthcoming in one of the next numbers of Swahlli Forum.

Until the Eighties the regional character of Kenyan prose writing was far less marked than that of Zanzibari novels. Different was the situation in poetry; in fact, Kimvita and Kiamu have been used even in modern times (see, e.g., Ahmad Nassir Juma Bhalo, Abdilatif Abdalla and Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany; the last one is well-known for his endeavour in enriching and modernizing Swahili terminology, and a few of his proposed terms, e. g. runinga for `television`, have been accepted). Kenyan prose fiction, on the other hand, used to be much alike to the up-country Tanzanian literary production, written as it was in standard Swahili, sometimes with many colloquial features.

As a subject of scientific interest `Western` comics (i.e. the European, American, Japanese comics) have after all achieved some recognition. From its beginnings in the 1890s the comic has been an economic success, and gradually gained importance in the contemporary cultural production of `Western´ societies. However, only with a development that finally met the tastes of a `Western´ intellectual readership, scientific treatment of comics became academically acceptable. Compared to the Western market, the production of comics in Africa is negligeable, and therefore its scientific reception almost nonexistent. This article, however preliminary, for the first time takes interest in an African comic, specifically the comics in Swahili, as a subject of its own right. Under the guise of discussing the question given in the title on two levels, I intend to present as much material as possible (without stretching copyrights too far), to give a short introduction to the theory of the comic, and to raise the reader´s interest for the Swahili comic. The first level of discussion focuses on a global perspective. Here I take a more theoretical stance, concentrating on the comic as a narrative medium, reflecting its inventory of representation and questions of reading. My main question is: What does the Swahili comic do that other comics do as well? The second level focuses on the local perspective. I look at the setting in which the comic occurs, i.e. Swahili- speaking, urban East Africa, and take into consideration the cultural embedding of the medium: What can the comic do in East Africa that other media or gemes of cultural expression (music, tv, literature, painting, theatre, etc.) do not or can not do? What is new about the comic in East Africa?

Indian Influence in Swahili architecture. The goal of this article is to establish a synthesis of current knowledge on the contribution of the Indian world in Swahili architecture, from the islamisation to the sultanate of Zanzibar. By Indian world, we designate Pakistan and modern India, more precisely coastal regions of Sind, Gujerat and Deccan. Indians have participated at the creation of Swahili urbanism since the eighth century and have acted on the evolution of this architecture. To apprehend the role of India in the Swahili architecture, we will divide our comment in three areas: religious, civilian and military. With an historical introduction to the relationships between Africa and India.

For the past 150 years studies on Kiswahili language, literature and culture have engaged the scholarly attention of many researchers (Hauner 1979. In their analyses of Kiswahili literary works, however, most critical studies have, generally, tended to neglect the aspect of artistic design. Instead, the central focus has primarily been on two interlocking aspects of these works: (1) their content, values or thematic messages and (2) their cultural and socio-historical contexts (Dorsey 1988). This widespread tendency to undervalue the importance of artistic design in Kiswahili literary works is not surprising as it was largely promoted by some of the earlier European authorities who popularised the idea that Kiswahili literature `is not of literary interest´ and `that social, cultural, and historical commentary by anthologists are more relevant to this literature than literary study´ (Biersteker and Plane 1989:451). It is encouraging to see, however, that in recent years more and more scholars, like Mlamali (1980), Fiedel and Shariff (1986), Biersteker (1991) and Mbele (1996), to mention but a few, address issues of artistic design in their critical appraisals of Kiswahili literary works. This article is a modest attempt to follow their example by looking at Utenzi wa Shujaka as an object of design; how the poet has used the technical instruments of verbal craftsmanshjp in his bid to elicit an aesthetic response from his audience.

This article discusses one particular issue of Swahili standardization. which is, in Kiswahili Sanifu, the correct concordial agreement to be applied to the lexeme -ingine (‘other’)? Should it be treated like an adjective, as ‘classical’ works in Swahili grammar claim as well as current educational books do? How can efforts in favour of standardization comply with the appearance of different variants of concordial agreement?

Katika kuangalia lugha ya Kiswahili, utaona kuwa uchaguzi wa lugha hii kama lugha ya taifa nchini Kenya na kama lugha ya taifa na lugha rasmi nchini Tanzania unatokana na mambo mengi ya kihistoria, kisiasa, kidini na hata kijamii. Mambo haya yamesaidia katika kukubalika kwa lugha hii na watu wengi katika nchi hizi na nchi nyinginezo ulimwenguni. Makala haya yananuiwa hasa kuangalia namna ambavyo vita mbalimbali vilivyosaidia katika uenezaji na ukuaji wa lugha ya Kiswahili katika ule makabala wa kuangalia historia ya Kiswahili.