Sandawe language
| Sandawe | |
|---|---|
| Sandaweeki | |
| Pronunciation | [sàndàwěːkí] |
| Native to | Tanzania |
| Region | Rift Valley |
| Ethnicity | Sandawe people |
|
Native speakers
|
65,000 (2009) estimates run from 30,000 to 90,000 |
|
Khoe–Sandawe (tentative)
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | sand1273 |
Sandawe is a click language spoken by about 60,000 Sandawe people in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. Language use is vigorous among both adults and children, with people in some areas monolingual. Sandawe had generally been classified as a member of the defunct Khoisan family since Albert Drexel in the 1920s, due to the presence of clicks in the language. Recent investigations however (Güldemann forthcoming) suggest that Sandawe may be related to the Khoe family regardless of the validity of Khoesan as a whole. A discussion of Sandawe's linguistic classification can be found in Sands (1998).
Sandawe has two dialects, northwest and southeast. Differences include speaking speed, vowel dropping, some word taboo, and minor lexical and grammatical differences. Some Alagwa have shifted to Sandawe, and are considered a Sandawe clan.
SIL International began work on Sandawe in 1996 and to date (2004), Daniel and Elisabeth Hunziker and Helen Eaton continue to work on the analysis of the language. They have so far produced a phonological description, a dialect survey report and several papers on aspects of grammar. Sandawe is also currently (since 2002) studied by Sander Steeman of Leiden University.
Sandawe has five vowel qualities:
All five vowel qualities may be found as short oral /a/, long oral /aː/, and long nasal /ãː/ vowels . There are therefore fifteen basic vowel phonemes. Short nasal vowels also occur, apparently from the historical elision of a nasal consonant that is still attested in related forms. Long vowels are written double, aa, and long nasal vowels with a tilde, ã.
Long vowels are about 50% longer than short vowels. In morpheme-final position, low-tone /u/ and /i/ are frequently devoiced, though this may not occur after /j/, /w/, or /h/.
The glyphs in italics are the practical orthography developed by Hunziker and Hunziker, followed by approximate equivalents in the IPA.
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