Zigula language

The Zigula or Zigua language, Chizigua, is a Bantu language of Tanzania and Somalia, where the Mushunguli (or Mushungulu) dialect is spoken.[3]

Zigula
Mushunguli
Chizigula
Native toTanzania, Somalia
EthnicityZigula, Mushungulu
Native speakers
480,000 (2009–2019)[1]
Dialects
  • Mushunguli
  • Zigula
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
ziw – Zigula
xma – Mushunguli
Glottologzigu1244
G.31,311[2]
ELPMushungulu
PeopleWazigula
LanguageChizigula

Mushunguli

The Mushunguli or Mushungulu dialect is spoken by about 33,000 people from the Bantu ethnic minority of southern Somalia, in Jamaame, Kismayo, Mogadishu, and the Juba River valley.[4]

Mushunguli shows affinities with adjacent Bantu varieties. In particular, it shares strong lexical and grammatical similarities with the language of the Zigua people who inhabit Tanzania, one of the areas in south-eastern Africa where many Bantu in Somalia are known to have been captured from as slaves during the 19th century.[5] Ethnologue notes that the Mushunguli in Tanzania are the Wazegua.[4]

Many Mushunguli Bantu men also speak as working languages the Afro-Asiatic Maay and Somali languages of their Somali neighbors.[4]

Phonology

There is no official or traditional orthography for Mushunguli. However, spelling practices from related Bantu languages can easily be adopted to render the language with minimal phonetic diacritics.

Vowels
Front Back
High ɪʊ
Mid ɛɔ
Open a

Consonants
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Plosive plain p t t͡ʃ k
implosive ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ
Fricative voiceless f θ ~ s ʃ
voiced v ð ~ z ɦ
Approximant w l j
Flap ɾ

The fricatives [z] and [s] freely vary with [ð] and [θ], respectively.

Tone

Vowel length is not distinctive, but phonetic length is especially associated with falling tones as in chîga 'leg'. The tone system is similar to that of Tanzanian Zigua.[6][7]

Notes
  1. Zigula at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023) closed access
    Mushunguli at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023) closed access
  2. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
  3. Declich, Francesca. 1995. "Gendered Narratives," History, and Identity: Two Centuries along the Juba River among the Zigula and Shanbara. History in Africa 22: 93-122.
  4. Ethnologue – Mushungulu
  5. Refugee Reports November 2002 Volume 23, Number 8 Archived November 11, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  6. Kenstowicz, Michael. 1989. Tone and accent in Kizigua – a Bantu language. in P.M. Bertinetto & M. Loporcaro (eds). Certamem phonologicum: papers from the 1987 Cortona Phonology Meeting, pp. 177-188. Torino: Rosenberg and Sellier.
  7. Kenstowicz, Michael. & Charles Kisseberth. 1990. Chizigula tonology: the word and beyond. In S. Inkelas & D. Zec(eds) The phonology-syntax connection, pp. 163-194. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Further reading
  • Hout, Katherine, and Eric Bakovic. "To fuse or not to fuse: Approaches to exceptionality in Mushunguli (Somali Chizigula)." (2014).
  • MacSaveny, Erin, and Erin MacSaveny. "Verbal tone in Chizigula." Occasional Papers in Applied Linguistics 5 (2009).
  • Temkin Martinez, Michal, and Haley K. Boone. "On the presence of voiceless nasalization in apparently effaced Somali Chizigula prenasalized stops." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 139.4 (2016): 2218-2218.
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