The Asa (Aasá) language, commonly rendered Aasax (also rendered as Aasá, Aasáx, Aramanik, Asak, Asax, Assa, Asá), was spoken by the
Asa people The Assa are an ethnic group based on the Maasai Steppe in Manyara Region, Tanzania. In 1999, they were estimated to number around 300 individuals, after the eastern Assa were assimilated into the Maasai. The Assa once spoke the Aasáx language, a ...
of
Tanzania
Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands and ...
. The language is
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
; 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 register of
Maasai Maasai may refer to:
* Maasai people
*Maasai language
* Maasai mythology
* MAASAI (band)
See also
* Masai (disambiguation)
* Massai
Massai (also known as: Masai, Massey, Massi, Mah–sii, Massa, Wasse, Wassil or by the nickname "Big Foot" Mas ...
like the mixed language
Mbugu
Maʼa is a Bantu language of Tanzania.
The Mbugu people speak two divergent register (sociolinguistics), registers, which have been treated as separate languages by some authorities (e.g. Tucker and Bryan): Mbugu or "Normal Mbugu" (autonym kiM ...
.
Classification
Asa is usually classified as
Cushitic
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 the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...
, most closely related to
Kw'adza. However, it might have retained a non-Cushitic layer from an earlier
language shift
Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceiv ...
, and might be best left unclassified.
The Aramanik (Laramanik) people once spoke Asa, but shifted to
Nandi
Nandi may refer to:
People
* Nandy (surname), Indian surname
* Nandi (mother of Shaka) (1760–1827), daughter of Bhebe of the Langeni tribe
* Onandi Lowe (born 1974), Jamaican footballer nicknamed Nandi
* Nandi Bushell (born 2010), South Afri ...
(as opposed to Maasai).
Vocabulary
*wataka - all
*buʕurita - burn
*dah - claw
*ga - cloud
*ki=te - die
*wa-t- - dog
*rakaš - dry
*yatara - drink
*haǯa-t - earth
*ʔag- ~ ʔag-im- - eat
*ila-t- - eye
*ʔoreʔ-ek - far
*maʔa - water
Notes
*Petrollino, Sara & Maarten Mous, 2010, ''Recollecting Words and Expressions in Aasá, a Dead Language in Tanzania''
External links
Aasax basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
South Cushitic languages
Languages of Tanzania
Unclassified languages of Africa
Mixed languages
Languages extinct in the 1950s
Dorobo
{{AfroAsiatic-lang-stub