Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist
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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˘ Pkk ‘Language of Fika’. The Gombe dialect refers to the language as B˘ D Ld ‘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.), nm Pkk (pl.) ‘one(s) of Fika’. The terms B˘l (pl. B˘lw) 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’ ptil 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’ shri ‘craving’ shri ‘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’ zwa ‘stick’ zw ‘competition’ HIGH-LOW: asàr ‘afternoon’ LOW-HIGH: àsar ‘unfortunate loss’ gr ‘lizard’ gre ‘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 showthat 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 ndk‰ arrival a d dog eng ngud lazy person b bab paternal aunt enj njl sleeping ɓ k duiker enz nz no yesterday bc c‰c church f d did fly (insect) o od beans πi bat sp. p pp persperation e em this one (m) r r ru augur beetle g g gg road s ssuwa African myrrh ch hkm yawning gsh sh shonge plant sp. i d communal prayer t ttok worm, grub dj jj a title u zur dust k kki crow w wwya grumbling l lla spider y yy sand m mm person híy íyla 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 (bíí = bíyíy ‘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-.