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Dahalo Language
Dahalo is an endangered Cushitic language spoken by around 500600 Dahalo people on the coast of Kenya, near the mouth of the Tana River. Dahalo is unusual among the world's languages in using all four airstream mechanisms found in human language: clicks, implosives, ejectives, and pulmonic consonants. While the language is known primarily as "''Dahalo''" to linguists, the term itself is an exonym supposedly used by Aweer speakers that itself essentially means “stupid” or “worthless.” The speakers themselves refer to the language as . Overview The Dahalo, former elephant hunters, are dispersed among Swahili and other Bantu peoples, with no villages of their own, and are bilingual in those languages. Children no longer learn the language, which would make it moribund, and it may be extinct. Dahalo has a highly diverse sound system using all four airstream mechanisms found in human language: clicks, ejectives, and implosives, as well as the universal pulmonic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenya
Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. Kenya's capital and largest city is Nairobi. Its second-largest and oldest city is Mombasa, a major port city located on Mombasa Island. Other major cities within the country include Kisumu, Nakuru & Eldoret. Going clockwise, Kenya is bordered by South Sudan to the northwest (though much of that border includes the disputed Ilemi Triangle), Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the east, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, Tanzania to the southwest, and Lake Victoria and Uganda to the west. Kenya's geography, climate and population vary widely. In western, rift valley counties, the landscape includes cold, snow-capped mountaintops (such as Batian, Nelion and Point Lenana on Mount Kenya) with vast surrounding forests, wildlife and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laminal Consonant
A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue, in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as far back as the hard palate, although in the last contact may involve parts behind the blade as well. It is distinct from an apical consonant, produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex (tongue tip) only. Sometimes laminal is used exclusively for an articulation that involves only the blade of the tongue with the tip being lowered and apicolaminal for an articulation that involves both the blade of the tongue and the raised tongue tip. The distinction applies only to coronal consonants, which use the front of the tongue. Compared to apical Some languages contrast laminal and apical sounds: *The contrast is common in Australian Aboriginal languages, which usually have no fricatives. *Some languages in South Asia contrast ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Cushitic
The East Cushitic languages are a branch of Cushitic within the Afroasiatic phylum. Prominent East Cushitic languages include Oromo, Somali, and Sidama. The unity of East Cushitic has been contested: Robert Hetzron suggested combining the Highland East Cushitic languages with the Agaw languages into a "Highland Cushitic" branch, while most other scholars follow in seeing Highland and Lowland as two branches of East Cushitic. Classification Clearly distinct subgroups within East Cushitic are Highland East Cushitic (including Sidama and Hadiyya), Oromoid (including Oromo and Konso), Omo-Tana (including Somali and Arbore), Dullay, and Saho-Afar. A number of tree models of how these relate to each other have been put forward. Highland East Cushitic is commonly seen as a primary branch, also in the "traditional" or "classical" view which groups Yaaku with Dullay and groups the rest as Lowland East Cushitic. With the addition of Dahalo, formerly considered to belong to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Cushitic
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 assimilate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oromo Language
Oromo, historically also called Galla, is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch, primarily spoken by the Oromo people, native to the Ethiopian state of Oromia; and northern Kenya. It is used as a lingua franca in Oromia and northeastern Kenya. It is officially written in the Latin script, although traditional scripts are also informally used. With more than 41.7 million speakers making up 33.8% of the total Ethiopian population, Oromo has the largest number of native speakers in Ethiopia, and ranks as the second most widely spoken language in Ethiopia by total number of speakers (including second-language speakers) following Amharic. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by an additional half-million people in parts of northern and eastern Kenya. It is also spoken by smaller numbers of emigrants in other African countries such as South Africa, Libya, Egypt and Sudan. Oromo is the most widely spoken Cushitic language and among the five languages o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waata
The Waata (Waat, Watha), or Sanye, are an Oromo-speaking people of Kenya and former hunter-gatherer A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived Lifestyle, lifestyle, in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, esp ...s. They share the name ''Sanye'' with the neighboring Dahalo. See also * Degere References Languages of Kenya Hunter-gatherers of Africa {{Kenya-ethno-group-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stratum (linguistics)
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Shift
Language shift, also known as language transfer, language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceived to be of higher-status stabilize or spread at the expense of other languages that are perceived—even by their own speakers—to have lower status. An example is the shift from Gaulish to Latin during the time of the Roman Empire. Language assimilation may operate alongside other aspects of cultural assimilation when different cultures meet and merge. Mechanisms Prehistory For prehistory, Forster ''et al''. (2004) and Forster and Renfrew (2011) observe that there is a correlation of language shift with intrusive male Y chromosomes but not necessarily with intrusive female mtDNA. They conclude that technological innovation (the transition from hunting-gathering to farming, or from stone to metal tools) or military prowess (as in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hadza Language
Hadza is a language isolate spoken along the shores of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania by around 1,000 Hadza people, who include in their number the last full-time hunter-gatherers in Africa. It is one of only three languages in East Africa with click consonants. Despite the small number of speakers, language use is vigorous, with most children learning it, but UNESCO categorizes the language as vulnerable. Name The Hadza go by several names in the literature. ''Hadza'' itself means "human being." ''Hazabee'' is the plural, and ''Hazaphii'' means "they are men." ''Hatza'' and ''Hatsa'' are older German spellings. The language is sometimes distinguished as ''Hazane,'' "of the Hadza". ''Tindiga'' is from Swahili ''watindiga'' "people of the marsh grass" (from the large spring in Mangola) and ''kitindiga'' (their language). ''Kindiga'' is apparently a form of the same from one of the local Bantu languages, presumably Isanzu. ''Kangeju'' (pronounced ''Kangeyu'') is an obsolete German name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sandawe Language
Sandawe is a language spoken by about 60,000 Sandawe people in the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. Sandawe's use of click consonants, a rare feature shared with only two other languages of East Africa, Hadza language, Hadza and Dahalo language, Dahalo, had been the basis of its classification as a member of the defunct Khoisan languages, Khoisan family of Southern Africa since Albert Drexel in the 1920s. It has been suggested, however, that Sandawe may be related to the Khoe languages, Khoe family, regardless of the validity of Khoisan as a whole (Güldemann 2010). A discussion of the linguistic classification of Sandawe can be found in Sands (1998). Language use is vigorous among both adults and children, with people in some areas monolingual. Sandawe has two dialects, northwest and southeast. Differences include speaking speed, vowel dropping, some word taboo, and minor lexical and grammatical differences. Some Alagwa people, Alagwa have shifted to Sandawe, and are considered a Sanda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voiceless Palatal Lateral Fricative
The voiceless palatal lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in a few spoken languages. This sound is somewhat rare; Dahalo has both a palatal lateral fricative and an affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...; Hadza has a series of palatal lateral affricates. In Bura, it is the realization of palatalized and contrasts with . The extensions to the IPA transcribes this sound with the letter ( with a belt, analogous to for the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative), which was added to Unicode in 2021. If distinction is necessary, the voiceless alveolo-palatal lateral fricative may be transcribed as ( retracted and palatalized ) or as advanced ; these are essentially equivalent, since the contact includes both the blade and body (but no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voiceless Alveolar Lateral Fricative
The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postalveolar lateral fricatives is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is K. The symbol is called "belted l" and is distinct from "l with tilde", , which transcribes a different soundthe velarized (or pharynɡealized) alveolar lateral approximant, often called "dark L". Some scholars also posit the voiceless alveolar lateral approximant distinct from the fricative. More recent research distinguishes between "turbulent" and "laminar" airflow in the vocal tract. Ball & Rahilly (1999) state that "the airflow for voiced approximants remains laminar (smooth), and does not become turbulent". The approximant may be represented in the IPA as . In Sino-Tibetan language group, argue that Burmese and Standard Tibetan have voiceless lateral approximants and Li Fang-Kuei & Wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
