Sabaki languages

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The Sabaki languages , derived from the name of the river Sabaki , are five closely related Bantu languages in East Africa . These include Swahili , which is widespread throughout East Africa , the languages Pokomo and Malankote (Elwana) spoken on the Tana River in Kenya , the dialects of the Mijikenda on the Kenyan and northern Tanzanian coasts and Shikomor on the Comoros .

The Sabaki languages ​​belong to the subgroup Northeast Coast Bantu ( English Northeast Coast Bantu , abbreviated NECB) within the East Bantu languages , which the linguist Thomas Hinnebusch classified in the 1970s.

The geographical distribution of the northeast coastal Bantu languages ​​suggests that this language group spread out from what is now Tanzania from the south. However, the further distribution of the Sabaki languages ​​is controversial, especially in connection with the Shungwaya traditions, in which the Mijikenda can be traced back to an area of ​​origin in the north. According to Thomas Spear and Derek Nurse (1985), the common area of ​​origin of the Sabaki languages ​​was in the area between the Tana River in the south, the Indian Ocean in the east and the two rivers Jubba and Shabelle in the north, i.e. between today's northeastern Kenya and the Southern Somalia . Hinnebusch, on the other hand, locates the region of origin of the Sabaki and Saghala languages (from the Chagga-Taita group of East Bantu languages) in the region between Kilimanjaro , Pare Highlands and Taita Hills and considers it unlikely that the predecessors of the Sabaki spokesmen moved further north and then south again.

In the purely geographical classification of the Bantu languages ​​according to Malcolm Guthrie , the Sabaki languages ​​are divided into zones G and E.

literature

  • Thomas J. Hinnebusch: The Shungwaya hypothesis. A linguistic reappraisal , in: JT Gallagher (Ed.): East Africa Culture History , 1976, pp. 1-41
  • Thomas J. Hinnebusch, Derek Nurse, Martin Mold: Studies in the Classification of Eastern Bantu Languages , in: SUGIA - Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika Beiheft 3, 1981
  • Derek Nurse, Thomas J. Hinnebusch, Gérard Philippson: Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History , University of California publications in linguistics 121, 1993, ISBN 9780520097759
  • Derek Nurse, Thomas Spear: The Swahili. Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800–1500 , University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985, ISBN 9780812212075 (pp. 40–51)