My good friend, Fuad, from middle school in Beijing was from Tanzania (with Omani citizenship). He spoke Swahili, as did another friend of mine, Evelyn, from Uganda.

Swahili is the best sounding language I’ve yet heard. (Yes, personal preference, but the intonation, word sounds, and cadence are absolutely beautiful to my ears.) Part of me has always wanted to start learning it just for fun. I realize, however, that I probably won’t – too many mapping tools to make, digital board games to design, and baseball to watch. Besides, they should have nano-chip implants before I die that automatically allow me to interpret any language as I hear it – I’m excited for this day!

Even if I don’t learn the language, I was happy to see there is a day for Kiswahili, which translates to “language Swahili”, and hence the name “Swahili” is typically used in English to avoid any Rio Grande River quirkiness.

I decided to create a dataset of where it is spoken natively, where the diaspora is (e.g., Oman), etc. I used Spatial Data Doctor to create the spatial dataset, including CSV and geojson of the countries.

I then asked Web Mapper to create a map with the datasets.

Finally, for fun, I had a new tool I’ve been working on and will release in the near future, a map design schema creator, create a Kiswahili design schema. It’s now available at the Prompt Cartography website.

View map here

Web Mapper Prompt

# Kiswahili Language Day Map

Hi. I would like to make a very stylish and respectful map showing the location and prevelance of the Kiswahili Language in Africa and the Middle East, etc.

I am attaching some datasets I have created regarding the language. Please take a look at them and the Readme file to come up with some good ideas about how best to represent these datasets.

We will iterate from there. Thanks!

I am also creating a new true LLM agent – very early stages – that I will create for others to download and embed in their own workflows and run with their own LLMs at some point. I’ve given it a really inspiring prototype name: Web Mapper 2.0 Beta. 🙂

This one chose to use a stereographic project, which was cool, but the layout and aesthetic direction still need a lot of work in my mind. Always something to do. I include a snapshot of the result below, though, just for fun.