Yaaku (also known as Mukogodo, Mogogodo, Mukoquodo, Siegu, Yaakua, Ndorobo) is an endangered
Afroasiatic
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
language spoken in
Kenya
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, map_caption =
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, capital = Nairobi
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, largest_city = Nairobi
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. It is
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 ...
, but its position within that family has been unclear. Bender 2020
008concluded it was
Omo–Tana ('Arboroid'). Speakers are all older adults.
Bender (2020) adds Yaaku to the
Western Omo–Tana languages
The (Western) Omo–Tana or Arboroid languages belong to the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia and Kenya.
The languages are:
*Arbore
* Daasanach
*El Molo
* Yaaku
The first three have long been recognized as related; ; Bender (2020 ...
, while its classification was previously obscure.
[Bender, M. Lionel. (2020). Cushitic Lexicon and Phonology. ed. Grover Hudson. (Schriften zur Afrikanistik / Research in African Studies, 28). Berlin: Peter Lang. ]
Language situation
The
Yaaku people The Yaaku are a people who are said to have lived in regions of southern Ethiopia and central Kenya, possibly through to the 18th century. The language they spoke is today called Yaakunte. The Yaaku assimilated a hunter-gathering population, whom t ...
are former
hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fung ...
s and
bee-keepers. They adopted the
pastoralist culture of the
Maasai in the first half of the twentieth century, although some still keep bees. As a result, the Yaaku almost completely gave up their language for the
Maa language of the dominant Maasai tribe (including the
Samburu) between 1925 and 1936. The variety of Maa they speak is called ''Mukogodo-Maasai''. Old Yaaku words are still found in bee-keeping vocabulary, for example:
* — 'honey' (cf. Maasai ''en-aisho o lotorrok'')
* — '
greater honeyguide
The greater honeyguide (''Indicator indicator'') is a bird in the family Indicatoridae, paleotropical near passerine birds related to the woodpeckers. Its English and scientific names refer to its habit of guiding people to bee colonies. Cla ...
(''Indicator indicator'')' (compare Maasai ''n-cɛshɔrɔ-î'')
* — 'wooden honey container (about 60 cm)'
A language-revival movement has started among the Yaaku in recent years, aiming to strengthen the Yaaku identity. In early 2005, Maarten Mous, Hans Stoks and Matthijs Blonk visited
Doldol on the invitation of a special Yaaku committee, to determine whether there is enough knowledge of Yaaku left among the people to revive the language. This visit has shown there are few truly fluent Yaaku speakers left, all very old: two women called Roteti and Yaponay, respectively, and a man called Legunai. The latter two are both of the ''Terito''
age set
In anthropology, an age set is a social category or corporate social group, consisting of people of similar age, who have a common identity, maintain close ties over a prolonged period, and together pass through a series of age-related statuses. Th ...
, which means that they must be around a hundred years old. Knowledge of vocabulary is much wider spread in the community. Full language revival is improbable because of the scarcity of fluent speakers, but one of the possibilities for a partial revival is to use Yaaku vocabulary in the framework of Maa grammar, a strategy that is analogous to the making of
Mbugu, a mixed language of the Usambara mountains in
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 ...
.
Notes
References
* Brenzinger, Matthias (1992) 'Lexical retention in language shift', in Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.) ''Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa''. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 213–254.
* Heine, Bernd (1974/75) 'Notes on the Yaaku language (Kenya)', ''Afrika und Übersee'', 58(1), 27–61; 58(2), 119–138.
* Heine, Bernd & Brenzinger, Matthias (1988) 'Notes on the Mukogodo dialect of Maasai', ''Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere'', 14, 97–131.
* Mous, Maarten & Stoks, Hans & Blonk, Matthijs (2005) 'De laatste sprekers'
he last speakers in ''Indigo, tijdschrift over inheemse volken''
ournal on indigenous peoples pp. 9–13.
* Sommer, Gabriele (1992) 'A survey on language death in Africa', in Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.) ''Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa''. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 301–417.
External links
The last speakers – Yaaku language saved from extinction
Western Omo–Tana languages
Languages of Kenya
Endangered languages of Africa
{{Kenya-stub