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Taita Cushitic Languages
Taita Cushitic is a pair of hypothesized South Cushitic languages, assumed to have been spoken by Cushitic peoples inhabiting the Taita Hills of Kenya before they were assimilated into the Bantu population after the Bantu Migration into East Africa. Evidence for the languages is primarily South Cushitic loanwords in the Bantu languages Dawida and Saghala (which are sometimes grouped together as the Taita language), as well as oral traditions of the Dawida and Saghala. Overview Derek Nurse and Christopher Ehret propose that Taita Cushitic must have comprised two distinct Southern Cushitic substrate languages, which they term "Taita Cushitic A" and "Taita Cushitic B". Ehret and Nurse (1981) suggest that Cushitic-speaking peoples reached the Taita Hills as early as the second millennium BC. South Cushitic loanwords that are found today in the Dawida and Saghala varieties of the Bantu Taita language indicate that at least three such South Cushitic communities previously inhabited ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cushitic Languages
The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As of 2012, the Cushitic languages with over one million speakers were Oromo, Somali, Beja, Afar, Hadiyya, Kambaata, and Sidama. Official status The Cushitic languages with the greatest number of total speakers are Oromo (37 million), Somali (22 million), Beja (3.2 million), Sidamo (3 million), and Afar (2 million). Oromo serves as one of the official working languages of Ethiopia and is also the working language of several of the states within the Ethiopian federal system including Oromia, Harari and Dire Dawa regional states and of the Oromia Zone in the Amhara Region. Somali is the first of two official languages of Somalia and three official languages of Somaliland. It also serves as a language of instruction in Djibouti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dawida Language
Taita is a Bantu language spoken in the Taita Hills of Kenya. It is closely related to the Chaga languages of Kenya and Tanzania. The Saghala (Northern Sagala, Sagalla) variety is distinct enough to be considered a language separate from the Daw'ida and Kasigau dialects. Daw'ida and Saghala contain loanwords from two different South Cushitic languages, called Taita Cushitic, which are now extinct. It is likely that the Cushitic speakers were assimilated fairly recently, since lateral obstruents in the loanwords were still pronounced as such within living memory. However, those consonants have now been replaced by Bantu sounds. The Taveta language was mistaken for Daw'ida by Jouni Maho in his (2009) classification of Bantu languages. However, it's a distinct language, lexically and grammatically closest to Chasu (Pare In aviation, PARE is a mnemonic for a generic spin recovery technique applicable to many types of fixed-wing aircraft, abbreviating the terms ''power'', ''aile ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mijikenda Language
Mijikenda is a Bantu dialect cluster spoken along the coast of East Africa, mostly in Kenya, where there are 2.6 million speakers (2019 census) but also in Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ..., where there are 166,000 speakers. The name ''Mijikenda'' means "the nine settlements" or "the nine communities" and refers to the multiple language communities that make up the group. An older, derogatory term for the group is ''Nyika'' which refers to the "dry and bushy country" along the coast. Varieties The New Updated Guthrie List from 2009 lists the following varieties and Guthrie codes as part of the Mijikenda cluster: * E72 – North Mijikenda (Nyika) ** E72a – Giryama yf** E72b – Kauma ** E73c – Chonyi oh** E73d – Duruma ug** E73e – Rabai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lateral Consonant
A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English ''L'', as in ''Larry''. Lateral consonants contrast with central consonants, in which the airstream flows through the center of the mouth. For the most common laterals, the tip of the tongue makes contact with the upper teeth (see dental consonant) or the upper gum (see alveolar consonant), but there are many other possible places for laterals to be made. The most common laterals are approximants and belong to the class of liquids, but lateral fricatives and affricates are also common in some parts of the world. Some languages, such as the Iwaidja and Ilgar languages of Australia, have lateral flaps, and others, such as the Xhosa and Zulu languages of Africa, have lateral clicks. When pronouncing the labiodental fricatives , the lip blocks th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Substrate Languages
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for 'layer') or strate is a historical layer of language that influences or is influenced by another language through contact. The notion of "strata" was first developed by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, and became known in the English-speaking world through the work of two different authors in 1932. Both concepts apply to a situation where an intrusive language establishes itself in the territory of another, typically as the result of migration. Whether the superstratum case (the local language persists and the intrusive language disappears) or the substratum one (the local language disappears and the intrusive language persists) applies will normally only be evident after several generations, during which the intrusive language exists within a diaspora culture. In order for the intrusive language to persist, the ''substratum'' case, the immigrant population will either need to take the position of a political elite or immigrate i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Ehret
Christopher Ehret (27 July 1941 – 25 March 2025), was an American scholar of African history and African historical linguistics who was particularly known for his efforts to correlate linguistic taxonomy and reconstruction with the archeological record. He was a professor at UCLA for almost half a century and published many works, including ''Reconstructing Proto-Afrasian'' (1995) and ''Ancient Africa'' (2023). He authored around seventy articles on a range of historical, linguistic, and anthropological subjects. These works include monographic articles on Bantu subclassification; on internal reconstruction in Semitic; on the reconstruction of proto-Cushitic and proto-Eastern Cushitic; and, with Mohamed Nuuh Ali, on the classification of the Somali languages. He contributed to a number of encyclopedias on African topics and on world history, such as Volume III of UNESCO ''General History of Africa'' book series for which he wrote a chapter on the East Africa, East African i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taita Language
Taita is a Bantu language spoken in the Taita Hills of Kenya. It is closely related to the Chaga languages of Kenya and Tanzania. The Saghala (Northern Sagala, Sagalla) variety is distinct enough to be considered a language separate from the Daw'ida and Kasigau dialects. Daw'ida and Saghala contain loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...s from two different South Cushitic languages, called Taita Cushitic, which are now extinct. It is likely that the Cushitic speakers were assimilated fairly recently, since lateral obstruents in the loanwords were still pronounced as such within living memory. However, those consonants have now been replaced by Bantu sounds. The Taveta language was mistaken for Daw'ida by Jouni Maho in his (2009) classification of Bantu lan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saghala Language
Taita is a Bantu language spoken in the Taita Hills of Kenya. It is closely related to the Chaga languages of Kenya and Tanzania. The Saghala (Northern Sagala, Sagalla) variety is distinct enough to be considered a language separate from the Daw'ida and Kasigau dialects. Daw'ida and Saghala contain loanwords from two different South Cushitic languages, called Taita Cushitic, which are now extinct. It is likely that the Cushitic speakers were assimilated fairly recently, since lateral obstruents in the loanwords were still pronounced as such within living memory. However, those consonants have now been replaced by Bantu sounds. The Taveta language was mistaken for Daw'ida by Jouni Maho in his (2009) classification of Bantu languages. However, it's a distinct language, lexically and grammatically closest to Chasu (Pare In aviation, PARE is a mnemonic for a generic spin recovery technique applicable to many types of fixed-wing aircraft, abbreviating the terms ''power'', ''aile ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bantu Languages
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The total number of Bantu languages is estimated at between 440 and 680 distinct languages, depending on the definition of Dialect#Dialect or language, "language" versus "dialect"."Guthrie (1967–71) names some 440 Bantu 'varieties', Grimes (2000) has 501 (minus a few 'extinct' or 'almost extinct'), Bastin ''et al.'' (1999) have 542, Maho (this volume) has some 660, and Mann ''et al.'' (1987) have ''c.'' 680." Derek Nurse, 2006, "Bantu Languages", in the ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics'', p. 2:Ethnologue report for Southern Bantoid" lists a total of 535 languages. The count includes 13 Mbam languages, which are not always included under "Narrow Bantu". ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Cushitic Languages
The South Cushitic or Rift languages of Tanzania are a branch of the Cushitic languages. The most numerous is Iraqw, with one million speakers. Scholars believe that these languages were spoken by Southern Cushitic agro-pastoralists from Ethiopia, who began migrating southward into the Great Rift Valley in the third millennium BC. History The original homeland of Proto-South-Cushitic was in southwestern Ethiopia. South Cushitic speakers then migrated south to Lake Turkana in northern Kenya by 3000 BC and further south, entering northern Tanzania in 2000 BC. The speakers of South Cushitic were likely the first peoples to introduce agriculture and pastoralism in the lands east of Lake Victoria. Being the only agriculturalists and pastoralists, they faced no competition and spread rapidly throughout southern East Africa. As the speakers of South Cushitic rapidly spread throughout Kenya and Tanzania, they encountered hunter-gatherer peoples who preceded them and whom they assimila ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loanword
A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term that is well established in the linguistic field despite its acknowledged descriptive flaws: nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything (i.e., the loanword). Loanwords may be contrasted with calques, in which a word is borrowed into the recipient language by being directly translated from the donor language rather than being adopted in (an approximation of) its original form. They must also be distinguished from cognates, which are words in two or more related languages that are similar because they share an etymological origin in the ancestral language, rather than because one borrowed the word from the other. Examples and related terms A loanword is distinguished from a calque (or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bantu Migration
Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle * Black Association for Nationalism Through Unity, a youth activism group in the 1960s * Bantu (band), a band based in Lagos, Nigeria * ''Bantu'' (album), a 2005 album by Bantu * Bantu FC, an association football club in Mafeteng, Lesotho *''BantuNauts RAYdio'', a weekly radio program on KABF in Little Rock, Arkansas See also * Bantu expansion, a series of migrations of Bantu speakers *Bantustan A Bantustan (also known as a Bantu peoples, Bantu homeland, a Black people, black homeland, a Khoisan, black state or simply known as a homeland; ) was a territory that the National Party (South Africa), National Party administration of the ..., designated land set aside for black Africans in South Africa during apartheid {{disambiguation Language and nationality dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
