,,-- - I Spraehe und Gesehiehte in Afrika 16/17: 213-238 / THE INTEGRATION OF BANTU LOANS INTO BURUNGE (SOUTHERN CUSHITIC)* Roland Kiessling Universitdt Hamburg 1 Introduction 2 Areal situation: Burunge, its regional status and the neighbouring languages 3 Bantu loans into Burunge 3.1 Phonological adaptation 3.2 Morphological adaptation 3.2.1 Nouns: gender and plural 3.2.2 Verbs 4 Periods of contact 4.1 Transfers from Swahili and Rangi 4.2 Transfers between East African Bantu and West Rift 4.3 Transfers between Sandawe and Burunge 5 Result Notes References 1 Introduction :\ This article deals with Bantu loanwords in Burunge, a Southern Cushitic language in Tanzania, and examines how these loans, taken from a Bantu source, are integrated into the grammatical structure of the receiver language. This is of some typological interest in two ways. First, the principles of assign- ing gender to a Bantu loan and forming its plural in a Southern Cushitic framework gives us some vital information about the way the Burunge noun system works. Second, Burunge uses a somewhat unusual channel to adapt foreign verbs to its structure. Several layers of loans from different sources can be recognized in Burunge. The article closes with an appendix including -----------------~----, 214 ROLAND KIESSLING several comparative word lists as a preliminary outline of lexical transfers in the Rift area of Tanzania. 2 Areal situation Burunge is a Southern Cushitic language spoken in the Burunge hills in the southeastern part of Kondoa district of Dod oma region in central Tanzania. The last decades have seen many Bantu-speaking Rangi immigrants moving into the Burunge country. Nowadays the Burunge still form the majority in l three villages (Go'ima, Mirambu and Cambaloo ) in the west and in the south of the Burunge hills, some thirty kilometres southeast of the district capital Kondoa. Burunge also settle in the neighbouring villages ofParanga, Chemba, Sogolo, Hombiri and Churuku, but there they are the minority among the Rangi. In Kondoa there are also some Burunge earning their living as traders or clerks, having given up their traditional way of life as farmers, and giving up their mother tongue for the benefit of Rangi and Swahili. According to an estimation by OSTBERG(pers. comm.), the total number of Burunge speakers approximates 20,000. The Burunge are farmers and cattle-keepers. They cultivate several kinds of millet and sorghum, maize, pumpkins and beans. Cattle is kept on small scale only. An essential part of the Burunge economy is honey. Most men are active bee-keepers. They practise a system of privatizing trees by using bee- hives (cf. CHRlSTlANSSONetal. 1991 :359). Many Burunge do hunting. And in the dry season that lasts from May to November they also gather wild fruit and greens. The Burunge are surrounded by the Rangi to the north, the Maasai to the east, the Gogo to the south and the Sandawe to the west. They don't have direct contact to their nearest linguistic relatives, the Alagwa, the Gorwaa and the Iraqw. There is no overlap of their areas of settlement (see Map). For a long time the Maasai used to be the traditional enemies of the Burunge. They were notorious for being warriors and cattle-raiders. Up to now there is no contact to them. Today most Burunge see another danger: L_I THE INTEGRATION OF BANTU LOANS INTO BURUNGE (SOUTHERN CUSHITIC) 2 I 5 " Arusha Datooga Maasai Slnglda e ~L / e'<;'ht.m..OOJ / Go'ima \ MljrrtJu. • • ¥o ~a""a\~k>oBurungeer,," -~ --- '~' e Forkwa Gogo ~km o 25 50 75 100 Neighbours of the Burunge Dadamo They feel threatened by the dominating and expanding Rangi that seem to be much more skilled and efficient in business. Everywhere Rangi immigrants in- trude on Burunge land. They buy land and make Burunge work for them as day-labourers for a low salary. Many Burunge are attracted by the opportunity of getting money without having to wait too long, but they neglect working in their own field during the main season. So they have a small harvest and still become more dependent on the Rangi for day-labour. 216 ROLAND KIESSLING The Burunge language is a homogeneous linguistic unity. There is no dialectal variation which is due to the comparatively low number of mother- tongue speakers and to the high mobility of speakers within their homeland. The Burunge language is definitely not on the brink of extinction, but it is pushed back into sociolinguistic comers. Burunge is used for oral communi- cation only. Reading and writing in the educational system and in the adminis- tration is done in Swahili. And also in most parts of everyday-life Burunge tends to be replaced by Swahili and Rangi. Even in the primary school of Go'ima Swahili is used as a medium for teaching, so children are exposed to Swahili in school at the latest. On the regional scale Rangi is more important, e.g. in trading. Burunge is spoken at home and in private environment only. There are only very few monolingual Burunge, most Burunge being trilingual at least with Burunge as their mother tongue, Rangi as a regional dominant lan-uage and Swahili as a national language. 3 Bantu loans into Burunge In general, nouns and verbs have been borrowed by Burunge, the donor languages being Swahili and Rangi. Cultural vocabulary for concepts and cus- toms foreign to the Burunge is involved in most cases. But there are also doublets which show that a recent loan supersedes an original Burunge word: source Burunge loan Burunge original gloss SWA' kazi kaasi yondu 'work' SWA baraza baraasa kwasluuma 'council' SWA safiri safiirim hhiyuud 'to travel' SWA fua fulim hhunc 'to wash clothes' SWA fundisha fundisim caahhas 'to teach' SWA suka sukum hhutl 'to plait' RAN ntoromondo tarimondo maaxu 'hippopotamus' RAN kalanga kalangim xwere'es 'to fry' RAN sIngani singanoo laqawa 'needle' Bantu loans, for being integrated into the grammatical system of Burunge, must be adapted phonologically and morphologically. THE INTEGRATION OF BANTU LOANS INTO BURUNGE (SOUTHERN CUSHITIC) 217 3.1 Phonological adaptation Burunge has 31 consonant phonemes:3 labials dentals dental palatals velars/ labialised pharyn- glottals laterals uvulars velars/ geals uvulars voiceless p t k 1<'" plosives Ef voiced b d eJ3 9 if pJosives laryn- tJ' Ef' q if r '1 gealised fricatives f s i X x" Ii h nasals m n J1 1] approx.l r 1 j w liquids With regard to Swahili and Rangi the Burunge system displays two de- cisive and typically Southern Cushitic gaps. It lacks the voiceless palato-al- veolar fricative and the whole series of voiced fricatives as well. So the main effect of phonological adaptation is the replacement of the foreign fricatives land z by sin Burunge. Bantu sh [J] -> Burunge s: SWA fundisha fundisim4 'to teach' SWA shtaki sitaakim 'to accuse' Bantu z -> Burunge s: SWA kazi kaasi 'work' SWA baraza baraasa 'council' SWA geuza geyuusim 'to change, to be transformed' SWA uza 'uusim 'to sell' This holds for the older generation, for monolingual Burunge and for the lan- guage purists among the Burunge. The young generation is much more ready 218 ROLAND KIESSLING to take over the foreign pronunciation and to retain the original phonological shape of the Bantu words. This is because they have been much more heavily influenced by Swahili and Rangi in their everyday-life. Another striking difference between Swahili (and Rangi) and Burunge is the phonological status of vowel quantity. Both Swahili5 and Burunge have a five-vowel system, but in Burunge there is a phonemic contrast of short and long vowels, whereas in Swahili variation of vowel quantity is a purely pho- netic phenomenon which is predictable from the position of the main stress on the penultimate syllable. So phonetic length of the penultimate vowel in Swa- hili kazi [ka:Z1] 'work' is rendered in Burunge kaasi Ika:si/ by a long vowel which is phonemic here, however. Occasionally phonological features are added, with the effect ofburung- izing the Bantu word. Thus the loan picim Ipitj' im/ 'to take a photo' gets a salient Burunge touch due to the ejective affricate c I tj'/, that is not present in the original Swahili word picha. It could have been adapted to Burunge simply by retaining the original palatal affricate ch Itjl which is a marginal phoneme in Burunge. A similar phenomenon of phonological cushiticization of a loan could be observed in Iraqw, where the Swahili word anza 'to start' is adapted to Iraqw by addition of a pharyngeal fricative initially to render Iansuus6 I fansu:9. Vowel onset of syllables is adapted to Burunge by insertion of h or glot- tal stop: SWA andika handikim 'to write' SWA uza 'uusim 'to sell' RAN odo 'oday 'red sorghum' A prothetic syllable 'v is added to dissolve nasal clusters in the syllable onset which are not allowed in Burunge: SWA nta 'intaa 'bee-wax' SWA ngoma 'ingoma 'drum, dance' RAN mbirikera 'imberekiya 'iron bells' RAN nguriryo 'unguru'u 'pillar' RAN nkata 'inkita 'calabash dipper' THE INTEGRATION OF BANTU LOANS INTO BURUNGE (SOUTHERN CUSHITIC) 219 3.2 Morphological adaptation Main typological differences between source and receiver language are the following: Whereas Swahili and Rangi are Bantu languages with nouns being divided into some eleven (Swahili) or 17 (Rangi) morphological classes, Burunge is a gender language, Le. nouns are divided into three morphological classes only. In both systems morphological class and number marking are closely connected and interdependent. But whereas Bantu languages mark noun classes and nominal plurals by the use of prefixes, Burunge - as a neat Southern Cushitic language - uses suffixes only. In verbal morphology Bantu and Southern Cushitic type converge.