Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T01:00:24.875Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some Preliminary Observations on the Borana Dialect of Galla

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

B.W. Andrzejewski
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The only publications in this dialect1 of the Galla language are translations of the Gospels of St. Luke2 and St. John3 and the Acts of the Apostles.4 The orthography used in these texts, obviously, has practical aims in view and dispenses with much of the phonetic detail which would be of interest to a linguist. As far as I know, there are no published works which would give a description of this dialect. The grammars of Borello,5 Hodson and Walker,6 Moreno,7 Nordfeldt,8 and Tutschek9 all deal with other dialects of Galla, which differ from Borana in many details.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 1957 , pp. 354 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1957

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 354 note 1 This dialect is spoken by the Borana (bOOrán*) people who inhabit southern Ethiopia and a part of the Northern Frontier Province of Kenya. The spelling Boran and Borana are both used in the European sources ; the Amharic spelling is . For further information about this dialect see Tucker, A.N. and Bryan, M.A., The rum-Bantu languages of north-eastern Africa (Handbook of African languages, Part III), O.U.P., 1956.Google Scholar An ethnographic survey of the Borana has been carried out by Dr. Paul Baxter of the Institute of Social Anthropology at Oxford, and is still awaiting publication. For information about the Galla people see Huntingford's, G.W.B.The Galla of Ethiopia.—The kingdoms of Kafa and Janjero, London: International African Institute, 1955.Google Scholar

page 354 note 2 Damsa Qulqulo aha tafame Luhani, London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1945.Google Scholar

page 354 note 3 Odu Qulqulo aha Yohana Qulquloni tafe, London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1934.Google Scholar

page 354 note 4 Wan Ergattuni tolcite, London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1954.Google Scholar

page 354 note 5 Borello, M., Grammatica di lingua Galla (Oromo), Torino: Istituto Missioni Consolata, 1939 (cyclostyled).Google Scholar

page 354 note 6 Hodson, A.W. and Walker, C.H., An elementary and practical grammar of the Galla or Oromo language, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1922.Google Scholar

page 354 note 7 Moreno, M.M., Grammatica teorico-pratica delta lingua Galla con esercizi, Milano: Mondadori, 1939.Google Scholar

page 354 note 8 Nordfeldt, M., ‘A Galla grammar’, Le Monde Oriental, XXXIII–XXXV, 1939–1941, 1–232.Google Scholar

page 354 note 9 Tutschek, C. (ed. Tutschek, L.), A grammar of the Galla language, Munich, 1845.Google Scholar

page 354 note 10 I also gratefully acknowledge the help and suggestions given to me by Professor Malcolm Guthrie in connexion with the formulation of the statements made in this article, particularly those in Section VIII.

page 355 note 1 The grammatical structure of this dialect is similar to that of other Galla dialects. For further information about the grammatical terms used in this article readers are referred to Moreno's Grammatica … della lingua Galla, op. cit.

page 355 note 2 The word ‘series’ is used here even if only one term is involved; thus ‘series’ means here a unit or a group of units characterized by the same mode of articulatiōn.

page 356 note 1 I am aware that further inquiry into the distribution of nasal consonants, both homorganic and non-homorganic, may perhaps lead to a different and more economic treatment.

page 357 note 1 In view of this the long t', for example, is represented here by tt' and not by t'tt.

page 357 note 2 The Watta are a low caste living among the Galla. For further information see Huntingford, op. cit.

page 358 note 1 Each of the words given in this group has an optional variant in which the glottal stop omitted: búa’, dúiisa, dຓia.

page 359 note 1 There are two features of the consonant s which require further, extensive investigation: (a) fluctuations in the length of this consonant which are difficult to systematize, and (b) a weak variety of ejective s which is sometimes used.

page 362 note 1 This ‘creakiness’ is often very slight.

page 364 note 1 The word ‘breath’ is used here in the specialized sense of ‘aspiration with a vocalic quality’ and not in the general sense normally used in phonetics. Several alternative terms could be suggested for ‘vowel-coloured breaths’: ‘voiceless vowels’, ‘unvoiced vowels’, ‘semi-mute vowels’, or ‘whispered vowels’, for instance.

page 364 note 2 Sometimes the strength (assessed in terms of audibility) of a vowel-coloured breath is so small that it is almost equal to that of ordinary exhalation used in normal breathing. In such cases the vowel-coloured breath can hardly be heard or only from a very short distance; the position of the lips and the tongue, however, is the same as in all the other vowel-coloured breaths. When a vowel-coloured breath is omitted, in an optional variant before a pause, the lips assume the same position at the end of the word as during the articulation of the ‘omitted’ vowel-coloured breath.

page 365 note 1 Tiling, Maria Klingenheben-v., ‘Galla-Texte’ , Zeitschrift fiir Eingeborenen-Sprachen, xix, 1928–1929, 1–12.Google Scholar

page 367 note 1 I have chosen the Absolute Form (Moreno's ‘Forma Assoluta’) as the Referential Form for all Nouns.

page 367 note 2 The 2nd Person Singular, Imperative Positive (Moreno's ‘2a p. singolare, Imperativo, Coniugazione Affermativa’) is chosen here as the Referential Form for all Verbs.

page 369 note 1 This device of transcription was suggested to me by Professor Tucker's, A.N. use of the exclamation mark for the ‘step down’ (see his The comparative phonetics of the Suto-Chuana group of languages, London: Longmans, 1929).Google Scholar The actual signs (arrows) have been used by Palmer, H.E. in his Everyday sentences in spoken English, Cambridge: Heffer, 1927Google Scholar, though for a somewhat different purpose.

page 369 note 2 A close parallel to this can be found in some dialects of Somali ; cf. Armstrong, Lilias E., ‘The phonetic structure of Somali’, MSOS, XXXVII, 3, 1934, 116–61Google Scholar, and my article ‘Accentual patterns in verbal forms in the Isaaq dialect of Somali’, BSOAS, XVIII,l, 1956, 103–29.Google Scholar

page 370 note 1 This Particle has several shape variants: hin, hin, , him, hiy, and hiw. As the St.S. I have chosen that shape variant which occurs in a minimum context consisting of this Particle and a verbal form beginning with a vowel, i.e. hin.

page 373 note 1 Cerulli, Enrico, The folk-literature of the Galla of southern Abyssinia (Harvard African Studies, III), Cambridge, Mass., 1922.Google Scholar

page 373 note 2 Moreno, M.M., Favole e rime Galla, Roma: Tipografia del Senafo, 1935.Google Scholar