 Historical linguists do not consider the Arabic influence on Swahili to be significant enough to classify it as a mixed language, since Arabic influence is limited to lexical items, most of which have only been borrowed after 1500, while the grammatical and syntactic structure of the language is typically Bantu.The Swahili language dates its origin to the Bantu people of the coast of East Africa.Much of Swahili's Bantu vocabulary has cognates in the Pokomo, Taita and Mijikenda languages and, to a lesser extent, other East African Bantu languages.