The Asa (Aasá) language, commonly rendered Aasax (also rendered as Aasá, Aasáx, Aramanik, Asak, Asax, Assa, Asá), was spoken by the Asa people 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 ...

. 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 like the mixed language Mbugu.

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 percei ...

, 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 Afric ...

(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