Tanzania's post-independence language policy has promoted Swahili as a means of achieving national and linguistic unity. This policy has affected the Ngoni language in south-western Tanzania. Today, Swahili has permeated communication all over Tanzania, even in rural and remote areas. This paper discusses lexical borrowing and especially borrowing in the basic vocabulary, which is considered less susceptible to borrowing, to establish the vitality of Ngoni in this bilingual setting. In using a new method where locally produced photos are used for elicitation, and mirroring the data with socio-demographic metadata, the results contribute to the understanding of what borrowing implies regarding the future of the language. Age-related differences were found amongst Ngoni speakers, but the differences in language use attributed to sociodemographic factors were far fewer than expected. Borrowing is solidly established not only among the young in the Ngoni community. Both borrowing and codeswitching (CS) were also frequent in typically rural settings, among subsistence farmers, where Swahili was found to be penetrating deeply into oral communication. Not only gap-filling concepts related to modern life were borrowed from Swahili; even terms used in traditional life, like farming, were borrowed, as well as basic concepts. This indicates that the Ngoni language may be threatened.

The current paper is an attempt at providing an ethnographic description of Tanzanian Ngoni access rituals (greetings) considering verbal and visual aspects of these communicative rou-tines. Three methods of data collection were used, namely: role-play, semi-structured inter-view, and observation. The role-plays were used in order to see how the Ngoni apply their knowledge of this kind of access ritual still acquired in the course of growing up in their communities. Role-plays were recorded with a digital camcorder after the interviews had tak-en place. Semi-structured interviews were meant to provide insights into diachronic develop-ments such as how the expression of politeness through greetings may have changed. Obser-vation method was meant to capture behavioural patterns shown during greeting exchanges and notes were taken immediately thereafter. The main findings are that due to pervasive con-tact between Ngoni and Swahili, greetings tend to be brief today and there is a widespread use of code-switching by all age groups. The tendency to prefer Swahili is viewed by older mem-bers of the community as lack of respect whereas the younger generations regard the use of Swahili as more appropriate and as a reflection of social changes that have been taking place in the community.

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