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Mbugu
Maʼa is a Bantu language of Tanzania. The Mbugu people speak two divergent registers, which have been treated as separate languages by some authorities (e.g. Tucker and Bryan): Mbugu or "Normal Mbugu" (autonym kiMbugu) is purely Bantu, with vocabulary closely related to Pare, while Maʼa or "Inner Mbugu" (autonym kiMaʼa) consists of an inherited Cushitic vocabulary with Bantu morphology similar to that of Shambala and Pare. They share a grammar, to the point that their syntax is identical and a passage in one can be translated to the other simply by changing the content words. The Cushitic element was identified as South Cushitic by Ehret. However, Kießling (2001) notes a large 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 H ... admixture. Mous presents the Cus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mbugu People
The Mbugu people, also known as the Va'maa, Ma'a (''Wambugu'', in Swahili) are an ethnic Bantu and linguistic group hailing from western Usambara Mountains of Lushoto District in Tanga Region of Tanzania. Tanzania's Mbugu (or Ma'á) language is one of the few true hybrid languages, combining Bantu grammar with Cushitic lexicon. In actuality, the people speak two languages: one closely related to Pare and the other mixed (differing from the first mainly in the lexicon).Tucker, A. N., and M. A. Bryan. "The 'Mbugu' Anomaly". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 37, no. 1, 1974, pp. 188–207, . They are approximately 60,000 living Mbugu people. Origins Historically the Mbugu were in the vicinity of Lake Victoria or, less likely, Lake Eyasi. However, Archibald Tucker's informant used the Swahili phrase ''bahari ya pili'', which means 'the other/second sea' and can also refer to a broad plain. As a result, it's possible that the Serengeti was in mind. From ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northeast Coast Bantu
The Northeast Coast Bantu languages are the Bantu languages spoken along the coast of Tanzania and Kenya, and including inland Tanzania as far as Dodoma.Derek Nurse & Thomas Spear, 1985, ''The Swahili'' In Guthrie's geographic classification, they fall within Bantu zones G and E. The languages, or clusters, are: *Pare-Taveta (G20+E70): **Pareic *** Pare, Mbugu ** Taveta * Sabaki (G40+E70): Swahili, Nyika, Comorian ''etc.'' *Seuta (G20+G30): Shambala, Bondei, Zigula ( Mushungulu), Ngulu *Ruvu (G30+G10): Gogo, Sagara, Vidunda, Kaguru, Luguru, Kutu, Kami, Zaramo The Zaramo people, also referred to as Dzalamo or Saramo (''Wazaramo'', in Swahili language, Swahili), are a Bantu peoples, Bantu ethnic group native to the central eastern coast of Tanzania, particularly the Dar es Salaam Region and Pwani Regio ..., Kwere, Doe The Ruvu languages are 60–70% similar lexically. Mbugu (Ma'a) is a mixed language based largely on Pare. Notes Languages of Kenya ... [...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] |
Lowland East Cushitic Languages
Lowland East Cushitic is a group of roughly two dozen diverse languages of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. Its largest representatives are Oromo and Somali. Classification Lowland East Cushitic classification from Tosco (2020:297):Tosco, Mauro (2020). "East Cushitic". In: Vossen, Rainer and Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2020. ''The Oxford Handbook of African Languages'', 290–299. Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Lowland East Cushitic ** Saho–Afar **Southern ***Nuclear **** Omo–Tana **** Oromoid ***Peripheral (?) **** Dullay **** Yaaku Highland East Cushitic is a coordinate (sister) branch with Lowland East Cushitic in Tosco's (2020) classification. "Core" East Cushitic classification from Bender (2020 008 91). Saho–Afar is excluded, making it equivalent to Tosco's Southern Lowland East Cushitic, and Yaaku is moved into Western Omo–Tana ("Arboroid"): * 'Core' East Cushitic ** Dullay ** SAOK *** Eastern Omo–Tana ( Somaloid) *** Western Omo–T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mixed Language
A mixed language, also referred to as a hybrid language or fusion language, is a type of contact language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. It differs from a creole language, creole or pidgin, pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgins arise where speakers of many languages acquire a common language, a mixed language typically arises in a population that is fluent in both of the source languages. Because all languages show some degree of mixing by virtue of containing Loanword, loanwords, it is a matter of controversy whether the concept of a mixed language can meaningfully be distinguished from the type of contact and borrowing seen in all languages.Arends et al. 1994 Scholars debate to what extent language mixture can be distinguished from other mechanisms such as code-switching, Stratum (linguistics), substrata, or lexical borrowing. Definitions Other terms used in l ... [...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] |
Labial Consonant
Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the lower lip against the upper teeth, both of which are present in English. A third labial articulation is dentolabials, articulated with the upper lip against the lower teeth (the reverse of labiodental), normally only found in pathological speech. Generally precluded are linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue contacts the posterior side of the upper lip, making them coronals, though sometimes, they behave as labial consonants. The most common distribution between bilabials and labiodentals is the English one, in which the nasal and the stops, , , and , are bilabial and the fricatives, , and , are labiodental. The voiceless bilabial fricative, voiced bilabial fricative, and the bilabial approximant do not exist as the primary realizations of any sounds in E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alveolar Consonant
Alveolar consonants (; UK also ) are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the upper teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue (the apical consonants), as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip (the "blade" of the tongue; called laminal consonants), as in French and Spanish. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) does not have separate symbols for the alveolar consonants. Rather, the same symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized like English palato-alveolar ''sh'', or retroflex. To disambiguate, the ''bridge'' (, ''etc.'') may be used for a dental consonant, or the under-bar (, ''etc.'') may be used for the postalveolars. differs from dental in that the former is a sibilant and the latter is not. differs from postalveolar in being unpalatalized. The bare letter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palatal Consonant
Palatals are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex. Characteristics The most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely common approximant , which ranks among the ten most common sounds in the world's languages. The nasal is also common, occurring in around 35 percent of the world's languages, in most of which its equivalent obstruent is not the stop , but the affricate . Only a few languages in northern Eurasia, the Americas and central Africa contrast palatal stops with postalveolar affricates—as in Hungarian, Czech, Latvian, Macedonian, Slovak, Turkish and Albanian. Consonants with other primary articulations may be palatalized, that is, accompanied by the raising of the tongue surface towards the hard palate. For example, English (spelled ''sh'') has such a palatal componen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottal Consonant
Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have, while some do not consider them to be consonants at all. However, glottal consonants behave as typical consonants in many languages. For example, in Literary Arabic, most words are formed from a root ''C-C-C'' consisting of three consonants, which are inserted into templates such as or . The glottal consonants and can occupy any of the three root consonant slots, just like "normal" consonants such as or . The glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet are as follows: Characteristics In many languages, the "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis (phonation) without a specific place of articulation, and may behave as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Velar Consonant
Velar consonants are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum"). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive and the movements of the dorsum are not very precise, velars easily undergo assimilation, shifting their articulation back or to the front depending on the quality of adjacent vowels. They often become automatically ''fronted'', that is partly or completely palatal before a following front vowel, and ''retracted'', that is partly or completely uvular before back vowels. Palatalised velars (like English in ''keen'' or ''cube'') are sometimes referred to as palatovelars. Many languages also have labialized velars, such as , in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also labial–velar consonants, which are doubly articulated at the velum and at the lips, such as . This distinction disappea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nasal Consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in English are , and , in words such as ''nose'', ''bring'' and ''mouth''. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages. There are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages. Definition Nearly all nasal consonants are nasal occlusives, in which air escapes through the nose but not through the mouth, as it is blocked (occluded) by the lips or tongue. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound. Rarely, non-occlusive consonants may be nasalized. Most nasals are voiced, and in fact, the nasal sounds and are among the most common sounds cross-linguistically. Voiceless nasals occur in a few languages such as Burmese, Welsh, Icelan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
