Gusii language

Gusii
	Ekegusii
Native to	Kenya
Region	Western Kenya, Kisii County & Nyamira County
Native speakers	2.2 million (2009 census)[1]; 0.5 million
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic-Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Bantu Northeast Bantu Great Lakes Bantu Logooli–Kuria (E.40) Gusii; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	guz
Glottolog	gusi1247[2]
Guthrie code	JE.42[3]

The Gusii language (also known Ekegusii) is a Bantu language spoken in Kisii and Nyamira counties in western Kenya, whose headquarters is Kisii town, (between the Kavirondo Gulf of Lake Victoria and the border with Tanzania). It is spoken natively by 2.2 million people (as of 2009), mostly among the Abagusii.

Sounds

Vowels

Gusii has seven vowels. Vowel length is contrastive, i.e. the words 'bór' to miss and 'bóór' to say are distinguished by vowel length only.

Phonetic inventory of vowels in Gusii
	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Near-close	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

Consonants

In the table below, orthographic symbols are included between brackets if they differ from the IPA symbols. Note especially the use of ‘y’ for IPA /j/, common in African orthographies. When symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant.

Phonetic inventory of consonants in Gusii
	bilabial	alveo-palatal	palatal	velar
plosive	p b	t	c (c)	k ɡ
fricative		s
affricate			cç (c)
nasal	m	n	ɲ (ny)	ŋ (ng')
trill		r
approximant	w		j (y)

The following morphophonological alternations occur:

n+r = nd
n+b = mb
n+g = ŋg
n+k = ŋk
n+m = m:

Bibliography

Bickmore, Lee

1997. Problems in constraining High tone spread in Ekegusii. Lingua, vol. 102, pp. 265–290.
1998. Metathesis and Dahl’s Law in Ekegusii. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, vol. 28:2, pp. 149–168.
1999. High Tone Spreading in Ekegusii Revisited: An Optimality Theoretic Account. Lingua, vol. 109, pp. 109–153.

Cammenga, Jelle

2002 Phonology and morphology of Ekegusii: a Bantu language of Kenya. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Mreta, Abel Y.

2008 Kisimbiti: Msamiati wa Kisimbiti-Kiingereza-Kiswahili na Kiingereza-Kisimbiti-Kiswahili / Simbiti-English-Swahili and English-Simbiti-Swahili Lexicon. Languages of Tanzania Project, LOT Publications Lexicon Series 7, 106 pp., ISBN 9987-691-09-9.

Whiteley, Wilfred H.

1956 A practical introduction to Gusii. Dar es Salaam/Nairobi/Kampala: East African Literature Bureau.
1960 The tense system of Gusii. Kampala: East African Institute of Social Research.
1974 Language in Kenya. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.

The gusii language has the consonant ' b' not realized as the bilabial stop as in 'bat' but as bilabial fricative as in words like baba, baminto, abana.

References

Gusii at Ethnologue (22nd ed., 2019)
Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Gusii". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online

External links

Gusii.com The Gusii Language Blog
Ekegusii Encyclopedic Project & online Encyclopedia/Dictionary
American soft power has helped this Kenyan man's efforts to ensure a future for his mother tongue—report by Patrick Cox for Public Radio International (January 26, 207)

Listening

National Public Radio story about Kisii language (from All Things Considered program, April 29, 2006)

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[e22-1] Gusii at Ethnologue (22nd ed., 2019)

[Glottolog-2] Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Gusii". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

[Guthrie-3] Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online