Gusii language

For the Gusii or Kisii people, see Gusii people.

Gusii
EkeGusii
Native to	Kenya
Region	Western Kenya, Gusii district
Native speakers	2.2 million (2009 census)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Northeast Bantu Great Lakes Bantu Logooli–Kuria (E.40) Gusii
Language codes
ISO 639-3	guz
Glottolog	gusi1247
Guthrie code	JE.42

The Gusii language (also known as Kisii or Ekegusii) is a Bantu language spoken in the Kisii district in western Kenya, whose headquarters is Kisii town, (between the Kavirondo Gulf of Lake Victoria and the border with Tanzania). It is spoken by the Gusii people, numbering about 2.0 million (SIL/Ethnologue 1994). A few Gusii people are bilingual in Luo.

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.

External links

• Gusii.com The Gusii Language Blog
• Ekegusii Encyclopedic Project & online Encyclopedia/Dictionary

Listening

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

See also

• Languages of Kenya