Gusii language
| Gusii | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EkeGusii | ||||
| Spoken in | Kenya | |||
| Region | Western Kenya, Gusii district | |||
| Native speakers | 1,5 million (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Niger–Congo
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | guz | |||
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The Gusii language (also known as Kisii or Ekegusii) is a Bantu language spoken in the Kisii district in western Kenya,whose head-quarters is Kisii town, (between the Kavirondo Gulf of Lake Victoria and the border with Tanzania). It is spoken by the Gusii people, numbering about 1.5 million (SIL/Ethnologue 1994). A few Gusii people are bilingual in Luo.
Contents |
[edit] Sounds
[edit] 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 | ɪ | ʊ | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
[edit] 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 = mm
[edit] 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 9987691099.
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 as bilabial fricative as in words like baba, baminto, abana.
[edit] External links
- Ekegusii Language Preservation Project
- Ekegusii-English English-Ekegusii Dictionary
- Ethnologue on Gusii
- Partial Gusii Swadesh list at Rosetta Project
- Ekegusii Encyclopedic Project & online Encyclopedia/Dictionary
[edit] Listening
- National Public Radio story about Kisii language (from All Things Considered program, April 29, 2006)
