Sukuma is a

Bantu language The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...

of Tanzania, spoken in an area southeast of

Lake Victoria Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. With a surface area of approximately , Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's largest tropical lake, and the world's second-largest fresh water lake by surface area after ...

between

Mwanza Mwanza City, also known as Rock City to the residents, is a port city and capital of Mwanza Region on the southern shore of Lake Victoria in north-western Tanzania. With an urban population of 1,182,000 in 2021, it is Tanzania's second largest cit ...

Shinyanga Shinyanga, also known as Shinyanga Mji in the local Swahili language, is a city in northern Tanzania. The city is the location of the regional headquarters of Shinyanga Region as well as the district headquarters of Shinyanga Urban District. The ...

, and

Lake Eyasi Lake Eyasi (formerly german: Njarasasee, "Njarasa Lake", and ''Hohenlohesee'', "Hohenlohe Lake") is a lake located in Karatu District of Arusha Region in north Tanzania. Lake Eyasi is the largest body of water in Arusha region. It is a seasonal ...

. Its orthography uses

Roman script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...

without special letters, which resembles that used for Swahili, and has been used for Bible translations and in religious literature. Dialects (''KɪmunaSukuma'' in the west, ''GɪmunaNtuzu/GɪnaNtuzu'' in the northeast, and ''Jìnàkɪ̀ɪ̀yâ/JimunaKɪɪyâ'' in the southeast) are easily mutually intelligible.

Phonology

There are seven vowel qualities, which occur long and short:Rahma Muhdhar, 2006, ''Verb Extensions in Kisukuma, Jinakiiya dialect'', MS dissertation, UDSM , which are written , may be closer to , and may be closer to . Sukuma has gone through

Dahl's Law Dahl's law (German: ''Das Dahlsche Gesetz'') is a sound rule in some of the Northeast Bantu languages that illustrates a case of voicing dissimilation. In the history of these languages, a voiceless stop, such as , became voiced () when immediatel ...

(''ɪdàtʊ́'' 'three', from proto-Bantu ''-tatʊ'') and has voiceless nasal consonants. It is not clear whether should better be considered as stops or affricates as or whether they are even palatal. Syllables are V or CV. There are four tones on short vowels: high, low, rising, and falling.

Grammar

The following description is based on the JinaKɪɪya dialect. One of the characteristics of that dialect is that the noun-class prefixes subject to

have been levelled to voiced consonants and so they no longer alternate.

Noun concord

Sukuma noun-class prefixes are augmented by pre-prefixes ''a-, ɪ-, ʊ-'', which are dropped in certain constructions. The noun classes and the agreement that they trigger are as follows, with attested forms in other dialects being added in parentheses: (For compatibility, is transcribed .) Many kin terms have a reduced form of the nominal prefixes, zero and ''βa-'', called class 1a/2a, as in 'mother', 'mothers'. Concord is identical with other class-1/2 nouns. Singular/plural pairs are 1/2, 5/6, 7/8, 9/10, and 12/13, and locative classes 16, 17, and 18 do not have plurals. Most others use class 6 for their plurals: 11/6, 14/6, 15/6, and also sometimes 7/6 and 12/6. There are also nouns that inflect as 11/4, 11/14, 14/10, and 15/8.

Verbal complex

Infinitive verbs have the form ''gʊ-''object-ext-ROOT-ext-V-locative, where ''ext'' stands for any of various grammatical 'extensions', and -V is the final vowel. For example, with roots in bold and tone omitted, :gũ-n-tĩn-ĩl-a :'To cut for him/her' :gwĩ-tĩn-ĩl-a :'To cut for each other' ''-ĩl'' is the applicative suffix, translated as 'for'. The

reciprocal Reciprocal may refer to: In mathematics * Multiplicative inverse, in mathematics, the number 1/''x'', which multiplied by ''x'' gives the product 1, also known as a ''reciprocal'' * Reciprocal polynomial, a polynomial obtained from another pol ...

prefix ''ĩ'' has fused into the infinitive ''gũ''. :gũ-fum-a-mo :'To get out there' ''-mo'' is a locative 'inside', as in class 18 nominal concord. Finite verbs have the form subject- TAM-ext-object-ROOT-ext-TAM-V. For example, :βa-lĩ-n-iiš-a :'They are feeding him/her' The root ''iiš'' includes a fused

causative In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...

suffix. Tense is marked by a prefix. The subject marker ''βa-'' shows that the subject is human plural, per the noun-concord table above. :o-dũ-saang-ile :'He found us' Here tense is marked by a suffix. :βa-gĩ-gunaan-a :'They helped each other/themselves' Here the prefix is fused tense and reciprocal ''ĩ''.

Language identity

It is reported that although Sukuma is very similar to Nyamwezi, speakers themselves do not accept that they make up a single language.''The Bantu Languages of Africa'', as above.

References

{{Authority control Northeast Bantu languages Languages of Tanzania