Gweno (kighonu, to its inhabitants) is a
Bantu language spoken in the
North Pare Mountains in the
Kilimanjaro Region
Kilimanjaro Region (''Mkoa wa Kilimanjaro'' in Swahili) is one of Tanzania's 31 administrative regions. The regional capital and largest city is the municipality of Moshi. With a HDI of 0.613, Kilimajaro is one among the most developed region ...
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 people known as the Gweno (or more properly ''Asu''
) are a
Chaga
The Chaga or Chagga ( Swahili language: WaChaga) are Bantu-speaking indigenous Africans and the third-largest ethnic group in Tanzania. They traditionally live on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and eastern Mount Meru in both Kilimanjaro R ...
ethnic and linguistic group. Since the Chaga people are
Bantu speakers, the adopted language contains dialects similar to that of the Kenyan language
Kamba
Kamba may refer to:
*Kamba people
The Kamba or Akamba (sometimes called Wakamba) people are a Bantu ethnic group who predominantly live in the area of Kenya stretching from Nairobi to Tsavo and north to Embu, in the southern part of the f ...
. Gweno shares about 54% to 56% of its vocabulary with other Chaga dialects and 46% with Taita dialects. However, a large percentage of its vocabulary is not seen in the other dialects.
Also at the start of the 11th century, the Chaga people descended and migrated from the Bantu group in which they migrated to the foothills of mount Kilimanjaro. The Gweno language is today spoken mostly by older adults, with younger generations having shifted to
Asu and
Swahili.
''Ethnologue'' considers Gweno to be moribund;
the language is not being passed down because children have not been exposed to Gweno since the 1970s.
The generational shift from Gweno to either Asu or Swahili has certainly created shifts in dialect, however Gweno speakers do not see this as a threat.
References
Further reading
*Sewangi, Seleman S. (2008). ''Kigweno: Msamiati wa Kigweno–Kiswahili–Kiingereza / Gweno–Swahili–English Lexicon''. .
External links
Gweno Languageat The Endangered Languages Project
found at LingWeb
Gweno, a little known Bantu language of Northern Tanzania
{{Narrow Bantu languages, E-H
Endangered languages of Africa
Languages of Tanzania
Chaga languages