Iraqw language
| Iraqw | |
|---|---|
| Kángw Iraqw | |
| Native to | Tanzania |
| Region | Arusha Region |
| Ethnicity | Iraqw |
|
Native speakers
|
460,000 (2001) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | iraq1241 |
Iraqw is a Cushitic language spoken in Tanzania in the Arusha and Manyara Regions. It is expanding in numbers, as the Iraqw people absorb neighboring ethnic groups. The language has a large number of Datooga loanwords, especially in poetic language. The Gorowa language to the south shares numerous similarities and is sometimes considered a dialect.
Whiteley (1958) lists the following vowel phonemes for Iraqw. All of the vowels except /ə/ occur in both short and long versions:
Whiteley (1958) and Mous (1993) list the following consonants:
In the popular orthography for Iraqw used in Lutheran and Catholic materials, the sound ɬ is spelled ⟨sl⟩ and ʕ is spelled ⟨/⟩ (Mous 1993:16).
Nouns in Iraqw have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. The gender of a noun can be deduced from the type of agreement that it triggers on other elements in the sentence, but the agreement system is unusual, and obeys the following principle (Mous 1993:41):
The masculine, feminine, and plural forms of the verb are identified by the form the verb takes when the subject is pronoun which is a.) a third person masculine singular ('he'), b.) a third person feminine singular ('she'), or c.) a third person plural ('they').
There are several unusual things that are worth noting. One is that 'tail' is neuter in the singular and feminine in the plural; despite this, the plural verb form is used for 'tail', since it is neuter, and neuters use the plural verb form. Another is that the verbs do not agree with their subjects in number, so the masculine plural daaqay 'boys' takes the masculine form of the verb, not the plural form of the verb.
Nouns typically have separate singular and plural forms, but there are a large number of distinct plural suffixes. Mous (1993:44) reports that there are fourteen different plural suffixes. The lexical entry for a noun must specify the particular plural suffix it takes.
The gender of a plural noun is usually different from the gender of the corresponding singular. Compare the following singular and plural nouns, with their genders:
While it is not possible to predict the gender of a noun or which plural suffix it will take, the form of the plural suffix determines the gender of the plural noun. So, for example, all plural nouns with the /-eemo/ suffix are neuter (Mous 1993:58).
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