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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] |
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 ... [...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] |
Aasáx Language
The Asa (Aasá) language, commonly rendered Aasax (also rendered as Aasá, Aasáx, Aramanik, Asak, Asax, Assa, Asá), is an Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language formerly spoken by the Asa people of Tanzania. The language is extinct language, extinct; ethnic Assa in northern Tanzania remember only a few words they overheard their elders use, and none ever used it themselves. Little is known of the language; what is recorded was probably Aasa lexical words used in a Linguistic register, register of Maasai language, Maasai, similar to the mixed language Mbugu language, Mbugu. Classification Asa is usually classified as Cushitic languages, Cushitic, most closely related to Kw'adza language, Kw'adza. However, it might have retained a non-Cushitic layer from an earlier language shift. The Aramanik (Laramanik) people once spoke Asa, but shifted to Nandi languages, Nandi (as opposed to Maasai). Vocabulary Asa is known from three primary sources: two vocabulary lists from 1904 a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burunge Language
Burunge (also Bulunge, Burunga Iso, Burungee, Burungi, Kiburunge, Mbulungi, Mbulungwe) is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Tanzania in the Dodoma Region, by the Burunge people, a small community of about 28,000 native speakers that live in the Northeastern region of Tanzania. The Burunge belong to a cluster of Tanzanian groups known as Southern Cushites, which also categorizes Burunge as part of the South Cushitic language family.Lamberti, M. (1991). Cushitic and its classifications. ''Anthropos'', (H. 4./6), 552–561. The Burunge live in close proximity to other languages such as the Rangi, Gogo and Sandawe, and ultimately, their language and culture is endangered by dwindling number of speakers and absorption by larger tribes. Name Burunge is a language spoken by a clan of peoples of the same name, and it belongs to a larger "Cushitic" language family which is one of the largest and most important in East Africa. Thirty million people in the region trace their native ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alagwa Language
Alagwa (Alaagwa’isa) is a Cushitic language spoken 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 ... in the Dodoma region. Some Alagwa have shifted to other languages such as Sandawe. Phonology Consonants * Sounds /c, ɟ, ɲ/ are considered rare, or mainly occur from loanwords. Vowels Alagwa has five vowels /a, e, i, o, u/. The five vowels have contrastive long counterparts. Tone There are two tone levels in Alagwa: low and high tone e.g., darimbáa "grass". Tone has grammatical function and limited lexical function. However, it cannot be described as a tone language because some words have only one tone (despite the number of the syllables) and the majority have none. Mainly, there are two intonation types: concluding intonation and non-concluding. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gorowa Language
Gorowa is a Cushitic language spoken in Tanzania in the Dodoma and Manyara Regions. It is also known as Fiome, Goroa, Gorwaa, Kimbulu, Ufiomi. As of 2014, an estimated 79,000 people (approx. 60% of the ethnic population) use this language on a daily basis. Older Gorwaa speakers in rural areas tend to be enthusiastic about their language and have contributed to a large body of data including songs, traditional stories, uncommon vocabulary, etc. Younger Gorwaa in urban areas view the language as less useful and may be reticent to speak it. Some use the exonym Mbulu (from a large Iraqw settlement) and say they speak Kimbulu; however, this is still the Gorwaa language. Codeswitching with Swahili is ubiquitous. Young speakers involved in documentation of Gorwaa have become researchers and assumed ownership of the project. Instances of Gorwaa writing are rare, and show a great variety of non-standard spellings. It is common to use the orthography of Iraqw for Gorwaa written communica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Degere
The Degere are a Mijikenda-speaking group of former hunter-gatherers of Kenya and Tanzania, now settled along the Ramisi, Mwena and Umba rivers, with a few along the coast. They may number no more than a few hundred to at most a few thousand. They are believed to be related to, possibly descended from, the Oromo-speaking Waata. They are variously reported to speak Duruma, Digo, a similar Mijikenda dialect of their own, or to speak Mijikenda with grammatical errors (such as incorrect verb tenses) much as the Waata do when they speak Mijikenda. A former arrow-poison trader reported that when he visited the Degere at Mkoseka in northern Tanzania in 1959, among themselves they spoke their own language, which he said was similar to Waata. He was able, with difficulty, to recall some words and phrases, along with their Waata equivalents, and equated the language with both Waata and the language of the 'Dorobo' hunter-gatherers on the other side of the Usambara Mountains The ... [...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] |
Ma'a Language
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 Cu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Click Consonant
Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the '' tut-tut'' (British spelling) or '' tsk! tsk!'' (American spelling) used to express disapproval or pity (IPA ), the '' tchick!'' used to spur on a horse (IPA ), and the '' clip-clop!'' sound children make with their tongue to imitate a horse trotting (IPA ). However, these paralinguistic sounds in English are not full click consonants, as they only involve the front of the tongue, without the release of the back of the tongue that is required for clicks to combine with vowels and form syllables. Anatomically, clicks are obstruents articulated with two closures (points of contact) in the mouth, one forward and one at the back. The enclosed pocket of air is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue (in technical terminology, clicks have a lingual ingressive airstream mechanism). Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Khoisan Languages
The Khoisan languages ( ; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a number of Languages of Africa, African languages once classified together, originally by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan is defined as those languages that have click languages, click consonants and do not belong to other African language families. For much of the 20th century, they were thought to be Genetic relationship (linguistics), genealogically related to each other, but this is no longer accepted. They are now held to comprise three distinct language family, language families and two language isolates. All but two Khoisan languages are indigenous to southern Africa; these are classified into three language families. The Khoe languages, Khoe family appears to have migrated to southern Africa not long before the Bantu expansion. Ethnically, their speakers are the Khoekhoe and the San people, San (Bushmen). Two languages of eastern Africa, those of the Sandawe people, Sandawe and Hadza people, Hadza, were originally also cl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
