Datooga language

Datooga
Datooga
Tatoga
Native to	Tanzania
Region	East African Rift
Ethnicity	Datooga
Native speakers	160,000 (2009)
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Nilotic Southern Nilotic Omotik-Datooga Datooga; ; ; ; ;
Dialects	Asimjeeg; Barabaiga; Gisamjanga; Buradiga; Bianjida; Rotigenga;
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	tcc
Glottolog	geme1247

Datooga (also Datog, Datoga, Taturu, Mang'ati, Tatoga or Tatog) is a

Southern Nilotic group. It is spoken by the Datooga people of the Great Rift Valley of Tanzania. The Sukuma name Taturu is also sometimes used in English; the Swahili name Mang'ati comes from Maasai

, where it means "enemy". However, it is not considered offensive to the Datooga, as there is a degree of pride in being the historic enemy of the Maasai, and Mang'ati has become the standard name for the group in Swahili. In addition, numerous tribal and dialectal names may be found for the people or language as a whole.

The Datooga have been claimed to be one of the least educated peoples in Tanzania, and there is almost no literacy in the language; literacy in Swahili has been reported to be very low in some communities. However, the Barabaiga and Gisamjanga dialects have been written, and some work is being done on Asimjeeg.

Varieties

Dialect diversity is great enough to make

Barabaig

, for example, are very close, and can be considered a single dialect. The other dialects, with alternate spellings, are Bajuta, Barabayiiga (Barabaig, Barabayga, Barabaik, Barbaig), Asimjeeg (Tsimajeega, Isimijeega), Rootigaanga (Rotigenga, Rotigeenga), Buraadiiga (Buradiga, Bureadiga), Bianjiida (Biyanjiida, Utatu).

A 1997 dialect survey includes data from four Datooga varieties:[2]

Bianjida (the most divergent)
Gisamjanga (including Bajuta)
Barabaiga
Buradiga
Asimjeeg
Gidang'oodiga (a special blacksmith group)

The suffixes -da (singular) and -ga (plural) on these names and many Datooga nouns are equivalent to English the .

Grammar

Datooga has been strongly influenced by South Cushitic languages previously spoken in the area where Datooga has taken over. In turn, Datooga has strongly influenced the Iraqw language which has occupied much former Datooga territory and has absorbed Datooga through intermarriage; for example, the Iraqw use Datooga vocabulary for poetic language.

Some varieties of Datooga have a verb-initial

marked nominative system. Numbers follow nouns, and question words come at the end of a clause. The numeral system is vigesimal

, but domestic animals are counted in pairs, so that the word used for 'five' when counting other objects means 'ten' when referring to goats or cattle.

Phonology

consonants
		labial	alveolar	palatal	velar	uvular	glottal
nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
plosive	voiceless	p	t	c	k	q
plosive	voiced	b	d	ɟ	ɡ
fricative		f	s	ʃ			h
liquid			r
sonorant				j	w

A retroflex /ɭ/ may also be present in some dialects. /q/ may have different realizations, being heard as [ɢ χ ʁ] in various positions.

Plosives are

zero onset

to a syllable.

vowels
	front	central	back
close	i iː		u uː
close-mid	e eː		o oː
open-mid	ɛ ɛː		ɔ ɔː
open		a aː

Sounds /i ɛ a u/ may also be heard as [ɪ æ ɑ ʊ] in free variation.

Final vowels are often

devoiced

in Gisamjanga and Barabaig, as may be the consonants which proceed them, which is why Barabayiiga for example is commonly transcribed as Barabaik.

References

^ Datooga at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023)
^ Ralph Schubert, Anette Schubert, Douglas Boone & Sheri Daggett, 1997. 'Datooga Dialect Survey', SIL.

Rottland, Franz. 1982. Die Südnilotischen Sprachen: Beschreibung, Vergleichung und Rekonstruktion. (Kölner Beiträge zur Afrikanistik, 7.) Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. 153-196.

External links

Asimjeeg Datooga DoReCo corpus compiled by Richard Griscom. Audio recordings of narrative texts, with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level and translations.

[e26-1] Datooga at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023)

[2] Ralph Schubert, Anette Schubert, Douglas Boone & Sheri Daggett, 1997. 'Datooga Dialect Survey', SIL.

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