Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist
Alhaji Maina Gimba and& Russell G. Schuh
University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London
BOLE-ENGLISH-HAUSA DICTIONARY AND ENGLISH-BOLE WORDLIST
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Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist
Alhaji Maina Gimba and& Russell G. Schuh
University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, one of thehe mostmost distinguisheddistinguished universityuniversity pressespresses inin thethe United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit http://www.ucpress.edu
University of California Press Oakland,Berkeley Californiaand Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd. London England
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS IN LINGUISTICS Editorial Board: Judith Aissen, Andrew Garrett, Larry M. Hyman, Marianne Mithun, Pamela Munro, Maria Polinsky
Volume 148
Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist by Alhaji Maina Gimba & Russell G. Schuh
© 20152014 by The Regents of the University of California All rights reserved. Published 20142015 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN 978-0-520-28611-5
Library of Congress Control Number : 2014949249
The paper used in this pubication meets the minimum requirements of ANNS/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
In memory of
HRH Alhaji Dr. Abali ibn Muhammadu Idris Alhaji Aliyu Maina Gimba Hon. Abdullahi Muhammed Garin Ari Malam Baba Ali
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi Abbreviations xxvii
BOLE-ENGLISH-HAUSA DICTIONARY 1
ENGLISH-BOLE WORDLIST 241
APPENDICES 313 BIRDS 315 FISH 317 FLORA 319 IDEOPHONES 327 IDEOPHONIC ADJECTIVES 331 EXPRESSIONS AND INTERJECTIONS 335 PROPER NAMES AND PLACE NAMES 337 TITLES 341 KIN TERMS 343 PRONOUNS 345 VERB FORMS 349
References 387
vii
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Compilation of this dictionary has gone through several stages. The first lexical work on Bole done by Schuh was a list of perhaps 1500 items collected in 1982-83 in collaboration with Malam Abdullahi Idi Gadaka1 in Samaru, Kaduna State when Schuh was a Visiting Professor at Ahamdu Bello University, Zaria. This work was supported by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Gimba, when he was a doctoral student at UCLA from 1996-2000, greatly expanded this list and adjusted it to reflect the Fika dialect. This work was, in part, funded by a US National Science Foundation grant (award # BCS-9905180, Russell G. Schuh, Principal Investigator).2 Compilation of the first printed Bole dictionary was done from 2002-2004, when Gimba and Schuh worked in Potiskum, Yobe State, Nigeria with Madu Bah and the late Malam Baba Ali, supported by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (award #BCS-0111289, Russell G. Schuh, Principal Investigator). During this period the number of entries was greatly expanded, definitions were refined, and Hausa definitions were added. In 2004, the FIRST EDITION of the Bole-English-Hausa dictionary was produced in Potiskum by Ajami Press. In part thanks to the success of this project,3 the Bole team of three collobrators who had worked on the first project was able to continue work from 2006-2009 with the support of another grant from the US National Science Foundation (award #BCS-0111289, Russell G. Schuh, Principal Investigator). This work culminated in production of the SECOND EDITION of the Bole-English-Hausa dictionary, again produced by Ajami Press, Potiskum. The SECOND EDITION not only had a considerably larger number of items than the first but also added examples of use and significantly improved formatting. Throughout the research on Bole lexicon extending from 2002-2009, the project benefited from the support of many people who were instrumental in making it as successful as it was. The compilers are grateful to HRH, the Emir of Fika (Moi Pikka), the late Alhaji Dr. Abali ibn Muhammadu Idris, and the Fika Emirate Council for their interest in and support of this project. Special thanks go to the late Moi Pikka and to the late Hon. Abdullahi
1 It is a pleasure to report that in 2002 Schuh was able to reunite with Malam Abdullahi, who had moved back to his hometown, Gadaka, in Yobe State. 2 In this and other National Science Foundation supported research mentioned in this book, any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF. 3 The full project involved five Chadic languages spoken in Yobe State: Bade (Gashua dialect), Bade (Western dialect), Bole, Karekare, Ngamo, and Ngizim. Dictionaries of all these languages were produced in 2004, and second editions were produced in 2009 for Bade (Western dialect), Bole, Duwai, Karekare, Ngamo, and Ngizim.
ix x Acknowledgments
Muhammed Garin Ari, who provided generous contributions toward publication of the FIRST EDITION in 2004, which brought written Bole to the attention of the Bole community. Special thanks go to Malam Madu Liman, now Registrar of the College of Education Zuba, Abuja, and to Halima Madu Liman and members of the Madu Liman household, for indispensable logistic support without which the projects would have been difficult if not impossible. Thanks also to Alhaji Ali Goni and to Malam Saleh Adamu for helping to create a smooth working environment. For technical contributions, thanks go to Jeffrey Heinz for invaluable programming of the electronic database from which this dictionary was built and to Sarah VanWagenen for creating the English list on which the English-Bole Wordlist is based. Roger Blench kindly provided a comprehensive list of Hausa botanical names and modern genetic classification that is the basis for the identifications in this dictionary. The present dictionary represents a major expansion and revision of the 2009 SECOND EDITION of the Bole-English-Hausa dictionary. This expansion and revision took place during a two-month visit by Gimba to Los Angeles during May-July, 2012, supported by a grant from the UCLA Academic Senate Committee on Research. The compilers were fortunate to collaborate intensively with Paul Newman, Professor Emeritus of Indiana University, who was able to come to Los Angeles in June, 2012. Prof. Newman’s visit was made possible by a grant from the UCLA College of Letters and Science. The compilers are particularly grateful to Prof. Newman for his detailed comments and advice, which he continued to provide during final revisions of the dictionary. Our collaboration on Bole began in the late 1990’s and has continued both in Los Angeles and in Potiskum, Nigeria, including many visits to Fika town, to rural Bole villages, and to both the University of Maiduguri and Gombe State University. In addition to those whom we acknowledged by name above, we thank all the others who have been generous in their time and support of all kinds and who are too numerous to mention individually. To all of them, we say, “Mu kunnang˘yi!”
Alhaji Maina Gimba Russell G. Schuh Los Angeles, April, 2014
BOLE-ENGLISH-HAUSA DICTIONARY AND ENGLISH-BOLE WORDLIST
The Bole Language
Bole is a language of the Chadic family spoken in northeastern Nigeria in Yobe, Gombe, and Bauchi States. Newman (1977), with minor revisions in Newman (1990), classifies Bole more specifically as Chadic > West Chadic > West-A > Bole/Angas major group > Bole group. Among its closest linguistic relatives are Karekare, Ngamo, and Maka in Yobe State, Kirfi, Galambu, and Pero in Bauchi State, Kanakuru in Borno State, and Tangale (among others) in Gombe State. The Hausa name for the Bole language is Bolanci, the name found in much of the published literature on Bole. There are two major dialect areas: Fika, spoken in Yobe State, north of the Gongola River, and Gombe, spoken in Gombe and Bauchi States, mainly south of the Gongola River.4 This dictionary is based on the Fika dialect. In the Fika dialect, the language is referred to as B˘ P kk ‘Language of Fika’. The Gombe dialect refers to the language as B˘ D L d ‘Language of “Aunt” Ladi’, the traditional mother of the Bole people. The Fika dialect refers to the Bole people as Am Pikk (m.sing.), ni Pikk (f.sing.), n m P kk (pl.) ‘one(s) of Fika’. The terms B˘l (pl. B˘l w ) are also used, primarily in the Gombe region. Ethnologue gives a 1990 population figure of 100,000, whereas Gimba (2000:1) proffers an estimate of 250,000-300,000. Whatever the exact figure, the Bole are numerically a significant ethnic group in northern Nigeria. Unlike most of their geographic neighbors, the Boles have been Muslims throughout their known history, and their traditional leader, Moi Pikka (Emir of Fika) has been one of the most prominent figures in the traditional political scene of northern Nigeria since pre-colonial times. As the title Moi Pikka implies, the
4 The only work explicitly addressing dialect differences is Gimba (1990). Data in Benton (1912), Abraham (1929), and Kraft (1981) are from the Gombe dialect. Data in Lukas (1969, 1970-72, 1971) are from the Fika dialect.
xi xii Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist political and administrative capital of the Bole emirate was Fika (Pikka in Bole), located in what is now southern Yobe State. This was the capital from at least the beginning of the 19th century until 1924, when, during the reign of Moi Mammadi (Mahammadu Ibn Idrissa) the British colonial administration transferred the administrative center of Fika emirate from Fika town to Potiskum (Palmer (1929), cited in Ibriszimow (1996: 211)). The earliest lexical information on Bole is a list of 253 items in Koelle (1854), who referred to the language as P∫ka. The first work on Bole lexicon meeting modern linguistic standards was that of R.C. Abraham on the Gombe dialect in Abraham (1929), which, unfortunately, has never been published.5 Abraham’s work, in addition to an extensive vocabulary, fully marked for tone and vowel length, contained grammatical notes and a large number of sentences and phrases. Kraft (1981), also from the Gombe dialect, is a list of about 430 items. This remained the largest published lexical work on Bole until appearance of the works described in the next section.
Background on This Dictionary
The present work is the first dictionary of Bole published outside Nigeria. It is the successor of two earlier dictionaries produced by Ajami Press in Potiskum, Yobe State, Nigeria both authored by Alhaji Maina Gimba, Malam Baba Ali†, and Madu Bah, edited by Russell G. Schuh. The Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary, FIRST EDITION, 2004, was, in effect, a preliminary work based on research done from 2002-2004 as part of the Yobe Languages 6 7 Research project. The SECOND EDITION, 2009, was much expanded in terms of number of entries and in forms of entries, which, for example, included notations on grammar and phonology and illustrations of use that were absent from the 2004 edition. The current dictionary is based on the 2009 edition, but it includes several hundred new entries, in particular many idioms, modern loanwords, and items relevant to Bole culture, such as traditional titles and place names. The number of examples of use has been massively expanded, grammatical and phonological information has been augmented, and Hausa glosses have been added to nearly all entries where Hausa was previously omitted. There are now over 5100 headwords, excluding “duplicates” that are pronunciation variants of other entries.
5 John E. Lavers (1992: 30) laments this fact, noting that this was “the first study of an African language by Abraham…the Bolanci study has lain unpublished, unused, and unknown even until very recent times.” 6 This project was funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (award #BCS- 0111289, Russell G. Schuh, Principal Investigator). 7 Work on Bole and other languages leading to the SECOND EDITION was funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (award #BCS-05553222, Russell G. Schuh, Principal Investigator).
Introduction xiii
Orthographic Conventions and Remarks on Phonology
Bole uses the same spelling system as Hausa for the most part. The main difference between the alphabet for Bole versus Hausa conerns the letters “p” and “f”. Neither language has a contrast in voiceless labials. In Hausa the voiceless labial is generally pronounced as a bilabial fricative [ɸ], written “f”. The Bole voiceless labial is usually a stop, pronounced [p] and written “p”. Compare the written forms of the following cognate items:
Bole: Pìkkà Hausa: Fπk ‘Fika town’ p til fπtil ‘lamp’
The distinctions between long and short vowels and distinctions between tones are both important for correct pronunciation and for distinguishing the meanings of words in Bole. Native speakers of Bole, however, know the correct vowel lengths and tones of words without having to see them written, and like publications in Hausa intended primarily for native speakers, publications in Bole have generally not marked vowel length and tone. In order to make the dictionary more useful to those who are not fluent speakers of Bole, however, vowel length and tones are marked for all Bole words and illustrative material. Marking of vowel length and tone consists of small diacritic marks above the letters. Native speakers of Bole who do not need these markings to know the correct pronunciation of words may simply ignore them. Marking of tones and vowel lengths are as follows:
LONG VOWELS have a macron above the vowel, short vowels have no marking for length: Long vowel: Short vowel: s‰ni ‘honey’ s ni ‘year’ sh ri ‘craving’ sh ri ‘Acacia tree’ b y ‘beard’ buyo ‘blowing’
LOW TONES have a grave accent ( ` ) over the vowel, HIGH TONES have no accent marks, FALLING TONES have a circumflex accent ( ^ ), and RISING TONES have a hachek ( ): HIGH-HIGH: korya ‘measurement’ LOW-LOW: k ry ‘storm’ z wa ‘stick’ z w ‘competition’ HIGH-LOW: asàr ‘afternoon’ LOW-HIGH: àsar ‘unfortunate loss’ g r ‘lizard’ g re ‘granary’ FALLING: b r ‘pillow’ HIGH: dir ‘threshing’ RISING: m ‘you (plural)’ HIGH: ’ya ‘thing’
NOTE ON CONTOUR TONES AND VOWEL LENGTH: Rising tones and Falling tones occur only on “heavy” syllables, that is, syllables of the form CONSONANT-VOWEL-CONSONANT (as in b r ‘pillow’, sǒn-kò ‘your age’) or syllables with a long vowel. In words like zâ ‘cubit’ and mǎ ‘you (plural)’, the ^ and tone marks are sufficient to show that the vowel is long, and hence
xiv Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist a macron as an indicator of vowel length is omitted. In general, Bole excludes long vowels from closed syllables (syllables ending in a consonant). There are, however, a few words that have long vowels in closed syllables with a Rising tone. In order to show that these words have a long vowel, the vowel is doubled, e.g. něem ‘hippopotamus’. In fact, it is a little difficult to tell whether such words are actually one or two syllables, so the doubled vowel is also a signal of that feature of pronunciation. The table below lists all the alphabetical symbols used in this dictionary in the order that they appear in lexical entries. For words differing in vowel length, short vowels precede long; for words differing in tone, Low tone precedes High. Symbols represent normal IPA values unless otherwise noted. 8 aí p íum gourd plant end nd k‰ arrival a d dog eng ngud lazy person b bab paternal aunt enj nj l sleeping ɓ k duiker enz nz no yesterday bc c‰c church f d did fly (insect) o od beans πi bat sp. p p p persperation e em this one (m) r r ru augur beetle g g gg road s ssuwa African myrrh ch h km yawning gsh sh shonge plant sp. i d communal prayer t ttok worm, grub dj j j a title u zur dust k k ki crow w w wya grumbling l l la spider y y y sand m m m person híy íy la guinea corn emb mb upper arm, wing z z z winged termites n n˘nu mother
aThe symbol ’ represents a glottal stop, IPA [ʔ]. All words with orthographic initial vowels are pronounced with initial glottal stop. Since this is 100% predictable, we follow the standard Hausa orthographic practice and do not write it in this position. A few words (fewer than five in current data) have a medial singleton glottal stop, e.g. pò’um ‘gourd plant’. The most common appearance of medial glottal stop is as a geminate. The main sources of this are as a variant of ’y, esp. before front vowels (b íí = b íyíy ‘elder brothers’), Hausa loans
8 All digraphs are treated as alphabetical sequences. For example, words written with initial mb- are alphabetized after words beginning with ma- and before words beginning with me-. Words beginning with sh- are alphabetized after words beginning with se- and before words beginning with si-. The symbol ’y is alphabetized as a separate unit, following y, since it is the palatal counterpart to and in the glottal series.