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Kerebe Language
Kerewe, or Kerebe, is a Bantu language of Tanzania, spoken on Ukerewe Island in Lake Victoria, the largest inland island in Africa. Kerewe phonology prohibits vowel sequences: if a vowel sequence arises in the underlying representation of a phrase, the sequence becomes either a long vowel or a glide followed by a long vowel in the surface representation. Literature The first attempts at Bible translation into Kerewe were some Bible stories in 1899, liturgical Gospels in 1921 and 1937 and a Gospel harmony in 1930. The New Testament was translated into Kerewe by French Canadian Padri Almas Simard (1907-1954) from the White Fathers, working with several native speakers. The translation received the imprimatur on 4 October 1945. It was published as Omulago Muhya, (Kikahindurwa mu Kikerewe) at the White Fathers Mission Press in Bukerewe. See also * Kerewe people The Kerewe (locally: Wakerewe) are a Bantu ethnolinguistic group based on Ukerewe Island in the Tanzanian section o ...
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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 the south; Zambia to the southwest; and Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. According to a 2024 estimate, Tanzania has a population of around 67.5 million, making it the most populous country located entirely south of the equator. Many important hominid fossils have been found in Tanzania. In the Stone and Bronze Age, prehistoric migrations into Tanzania included South Cushitic languages, Southern Cushitic speakers similar to modern day Iraqw people who moved south from present-day Ethiopia; Eastern Cushitic people who moved into Tanzania from north of Lake Turkana about 2,000 and 4,000 years ago; and the Southern Nilotic languages, Southern Nilotes, including the Datooga people, Datoog, who originated fro ...
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Bantu Language
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". ...
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Imprimatur
An imprimatur (sometimes abbreviated as ''impr.'', from Latin, "let it be printed") is a declaration authorizing publication of a book. The term is also applied loosely to any mark of approval or endorsement. The imprimatur rule in the Catholic Church effectively dates from the dawn of printing, and is first seen in the printing and publishing centres of Germany and Venice; many secular states or cities began to require registration or approval of published works around the same time, and in some countries such restrictions still continue, though the collapse of the Soviet bloc has reduced their number. Catholic Church In the Catholic Church an imprimatur is an official declaration by a Church authority that a book or other printed work may be published; it is usually only applied for and granted to books on religious topics from a Catholic perspective. Approval is given in accordance with canons 822 to 832 of the Code of Canon Law, which do not require the use of the wor ...
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Gospel Harmony
A gospel harmony is an attempt to compile the canonical gospels of the Christian New Testament into a single account. This may take the form either of a single, merged narrative, or a tabular format with one column for each gospel, technically known as a synopsis, although the word ''harmony'' is often used for both. Harmonies are constructed for a variety of purposes: to create a readable and accessible piece of literature for the general public, to establish a scholarly chronology of events in the life of Jesus as depicted in the canonical gospels, or to better understand how the accounts relate to each other. Among academics, the construction of harmonies has been favoured by conservative scholars, though one scholar, B. S. Childs, opposes this. Students of higher criticism see the divergences between the gospel accounts as reflecting the construction of traditions by the early Christian communities. Among modern academics, attempts to construct a single story have largely ...
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Glide (linguistics)
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the syllable nucleus, nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are ''y'' and ''w'' in ''yes'' and ''west'', respectively. Written in International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA, ''y'' and ''w'' are near to the vowels ''ee'' and ''oo'' in ''seen'' and ''moon,'' written in IPA. The term ''glide'' may alternatively refer to any type of transitional sound, not necessarily a semivowel. Classification Semivowels form a subclass of Approximant consonant, approximants. Although "semivowel" and "approximant" are sometimes treated as synonymous, most authors use the term "semivowel" for a more restricted set; there is no universally agreed-upon definition, and the exact details may vary from author to author. For example, do not consider the labiodental approximant to be a semivowel. In the International ...
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Long Vowel
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels. On one hand, many languages do not distinguish vowel length phonemically, meaning that vowel length alone does not change the meanings of words. However, the amount of time a vowel is uttered can change based on factors such as the phonetic characteristics of the sounds around it: the phonetic environment. An example is that vowels tend to be pronounced longer before a voiced consonant and shorter before a voiceless consonant in the standard accents of American and British English. On the other hand, vowel length is indeed an important phonemic factor in certain languages, meaning vowel length can change word-meanings, for example in Arabic, Czech, Dravidian languages (such as Tamil), some Finno-Ugric languages (such as Finnish and Estonian), Japanese, Kyrgyz, ...
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Underlying Representation
In some models of phonology as well as morphophonology in the field of linguistics, the underlying representation (UR) or underlying form (UF) of a word or morpheme is the abstract form that a word or morpheme is postulated to have before any phonological rules have been applied to it. In contrast, a surface representation is the phonetic representation of the word or sound. The concept of an underlying representation is central to generative grammar. If more phonological rules apply to the same underlying form, they can apply wholly independently of each other or in a feeding or counterbleeding order. The underlying representation of a morpheme is considered to be invariable across related forms (except in cases of suppletion), despite alternations among various allophones on the surface. Examples In many cases, the underlying form is simply the phonemic form. For example, in many varieties of American English, the phoneme in a word like ''wet'' can surface either as an ...
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Vowel Sequence
In phonology, hiatus ( ) or diaeresis ( ; also spelled dieresis or diæresis) describes the occurrence of two separate vowel sounds in adjacent syllables with no intervening consonant. When two vowel sounds instead occur together as part of a single syllable, the result is called a diphthong. Preference Some languages do not have diphthongs, except sometimes in rapid speech, or they have a limited number of diphthongs but also numerous vowel sequences that cannot form diphthongs and so appear in hiatus. That is the case for Nuosu, Bantu languages like Swahili, and Lakota. An example is Swahili 'purify' with three syllables. Avoidance Many languages disallow or restrict hiatus and avoid it by deleting or assimilating the vowel sound or by adding an extra consonant sound. Epenthesis A consonant sound may be added between vowels (epenthesis) to prevent hiatus. That is most often a semivowel or a glottal, but all kinds of other consonants can be used as well, depending on the ...
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Ukerewe Island
Ukerewe Island (''Kisiwa cha Ukerewe'', in Swahili) is a freshwater island located in Lake Victoria. The island is administratively part of Ukerewe District in Mwanza Region, Tanzania. The island fifth-largest lake island in the world. With an area of , it is also the largest island in Lake Victoria and the largest lake island in Africa. Ukerewe Island is located north of the city of Mwanza to which it is linked by ferry. A ferry crossing of links the island to a dirt road on the eastern lake shore, which runs to Kibara and the city of Musoma in Mara Region. The shoreline of Ukerewe Island is carved into numerous bays and it is surrounded by at least a dozen smaller islands. Its largest community is the town of Nansio. Ukerewe island is known for having a large population of Tanzanians with albinism. Many of the first of them to live there were taken to and abandoned on the island by their families as children. Despite comprising an exceptionally high percentage of the island' ...
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Rutara Languages
The Rutara or Runyakitara languages (endonym: ''Orutara'', ''Orunyakitara'') are a group of closely related Bantu languages spoken in the African Great Lakes region. They include languages such as Runyoro, Runyankore, Kiga language, Rukiga and Haya language, Ruhaya. The language group takes its name from the Empire of Kitara. Classification David L. Schoenbrun classifies the Rutara languages as follows: *Rutara ** North Rutara *** Nkore-Kiga-Nyoro-Tooro **** Nkore-Kiga language, Nkore-Kiga (Runyankore-Rukiga) ***** Nkore language, Nkore (Runyankore) ***** Kiga language, Kiga (Rukiga) **** Nyoro-Tooro language, Nyoro-Tooro (Runyoro-Rutooro) ***** Nyoro language, Nyoro (Runyoro) ***** Tooro language, Tooro (Rutooro) ***Ruuli language, Ruuli (Ruruuli) ***Talinga language, Talinga (Kitalinga) ***Hema language, Hema (Ruhema) **South Rutara *** Haya language, Haya (Luhaya) ***Nyambo language, Nyambo (Runyambo) **Kerewe language, Kerewe **Zinza language, Zinza Standardized language ...
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Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. With a surface area of approximately , Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's largest tropics, tropical lake, and the world's second-largest fresh water lake by surface area after Lake Superior in North America. In terms of volume, Lake Victoria is the world's list of lakes by volume, ninth-largest continental lake, containing about of water. Lake Victoria occupies a shallow Depression (geology), depression in Africa. The lake has an average depth of and a maximum depth of .United Nations, ''Development and Harmonisation of Environmental Laws Volume 1: Report on the Legal and Institutional Issues in the Lake Victoria Basin'', United Nations, 1999, page 17 Its drainage basin, catchment area covers . The lake has a shoreline of when digitized at the 1:25,000 level, with islands constituting 3.7% of this length. The lake's area is divided among three countries: Tanzania occupies 49% (), Uganda 45% (), and ...
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West Nyanza Languages
The West Nyanza languages are a subgroup of the Great Lakes Bantu languages spoken in Uganda, Tanzania and the DRC. History People first spoke proto-West Nyanza in the year 100AD in the Kagera Region, and their descendants eventually formed two speech communities, one speaking Proto-Rutara and the other Proto-North Nyanza. North Nyanza began to be spoken as a language on the northwestern shore of Lake Victoria in the sixth century CE while Proto-Rutara was developed by the people who stayed behind in the Kagera Region. Many of the northern Rutara peoples (whose descendants founded Kitara) migrating northwestwards into the drier and more open woody savanna grasslands of western Uganda developed a political economy based mostly on intensive Cattle keeping and cereal growing (especially of finger millet) while the North Nyanza peoples (whose descendants founded Buganda and Busoga) created a land-intensive political economy around their banana and plantain groves and fishing ...
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