Gusii language
| Gusii | |
|---|---|
| EkeGusii | |
| Native to | Kenya |
| Region | Western Kenya, Gusii district |
Native speakers | 2.2 million (2009 census)[1] |
|
Niger–Congo
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
guz |
| Glottolog |
gusi1247[2] |
JE.42[3] | |
The Gusii language (also known as Kisii or Ekegusii) is a Bantu language spoken in the Kisii district in western Kenya, whose headquarters is Kisii town, (between the Kavirondo Gulf of Lake Victoria and the border with Tanzania). It is spoken by the Gusii people, numbering about 2.0 million (SIL/Ethnologue 1994). A few Gusii people are bilingual in Luo.
Sounds
Vowels
Gusii has seven vowels. Vowel length is contrastive, i.e. the words 'bór' to miss and 'bóór' to say are distinguished by vowel length only.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Near-close | e | o | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
Consonants
In the table below, orthographic symbols are included between brackets if they differ from the IPA symbols. Note especially the use of ‘y’ for IPA /j/, common in African orthographies. When symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant.
| bilabial | alveo-palatal | palatal | velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | p b | t | c (c) | k ɡ |
| fricative | s | |||
| affricate | cç (c) | |||
| nasal | m | n | ɲ (ny) | ŋ (ng') |
| trill | r | |||
| approximant | w | j (y) |
The following morphophonological alternations occur:
- n+r = nd
- n+b = mb
- n+g = ŋg
- n+k = ŋk
- n+m = m:
Bibliography
Bickmore, Lee
- 1997. Problems in constraining High tone spread in Ekegusii. Lingua, vol. 102, pp. 265–290.
- 1998. Metathesis and Dahl’s Law in Ekegusii. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, vol. 28:2, pp. 149–168.
- 1999. High Tone Spreading in Ekegusii Revisited: An Optimality Theoretic Account. Lingua, vol. 109, pp. 109–153.
Cammenga, Jelle
- 2002 Phonology and morphology of Ekegusii: a Bantu language of Kenya. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
Mreta, Abel Y.
- 2008 Kisimbiti: Msamiati wa Kisimbiti-Kiingereza-Kiswahili na Kiingereza-Kisimbiti-Kiswahili / Simbiti-English-Swahili and English-Simbiti-Swahili Lexicon. Languages of Tanzania Project, LOT Publications Lexicon Series 7, 106 pp., ISBN 9987-691-09-9.
Whiteley, Wilfred H.
- 1956 A practical introduction to Gusii. Dar es Salaam/Nairobi/Kampala: East African Literature Bureau.
- 1960 The tense system of Gusii. Kampala: East African Institute of Social Research.
- 1974 Language in Kenya. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.
The gusii language has the consonant ' b' not realized as the bilabial stop as in 'bat' but as bilabial fricative as in words like baba, baminto, abana.
See also
References
- ↑ Gusii at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Gusii". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ↑ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
External links
- Gusii.com The Gusii Language Blog
- Ekegusii Encyclopedic Project & online Encyclopedia/Dictionary
- American soft power has helped this Kenyan man's efforts to ensure a future for his mother tongue—report by Patrick Cox for Public Radio International (January 26, 207)
Listening
- National Public Radio story about Kisii language (from All Things Considered program, April 29, 2006)
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