El Molo language

Last updated
El Molo
Native to Kenya
RegionLake Turkana
Ethnicity560 El Molo people [1]
Extinct 1999, with the death of Kaayo [2]
Revival [3] [4]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 elo
Glottolog elmo1238
ELP El Molo

El Molo is a possibly extinct language belonging to the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It was spoken by the El Molo people on the southeastern shore of Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya. Alternate names to El Molo are Dehes, Elmolo, Fura-Pawa, and Ldes. [1] [2] It was thought to be extinct in the middle part of the 20th century, but a few speakers were found in the later 20th century. Most of the El Molo population have shifted to the neighboring Samburu language. El Molo also has no known dialects but it is similar to Daasanach. [2]

Contents

Oral tradition sees the El Molo people as an offshoot of the Arbore people in South Ethiopia. [5] This seems to be confirmed by El Molo's linguistic proximity to the Arbore language. [6]

Classification

El Molo belongs to the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. [7] The Cushitic languages are one of the largest language families of East Africa, spoken in an area stretching from North-East Sudan at the Egyptian border, embracing Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, a considerable part of Kenya, and some areas of Northern Tanzania. [8] Its closest relative is Arbore, followed by Dhaasanac, both spoken mainly across the border in southwest Ethiopia. These form the Arboroid subgroup of Cushitic.

The name El Molo is a Samburu name referring to people who do not use livestock as their source of income. [9] The name is formed from the Samburu definite article l-, el- and the El Molo word molu (phonetically [ˈmóˑlo̝]) 'this person'. [10]

An unsolved question is whether the Elmolo were “originally” speakers of a Cushitic language, and still another is whether they were always fishers or rather pastoralists who turned to fishing out of necessity in an area unsuitable for animal husbandry. Heine (1982) favors the first hypothesis, and claims that traditional fishing in Kenya’s Rift Valley is likely to go back to Eastern Cushites originating from the Ethiopian Highlands. [11]

Population

The El Molo population is also referred to as the “Dhes, Elmolo, Fura-Pawa, Ldes, and Ndorobo”. They are fishermen concentrated in two villages in Marsabit District on the southeast shore of Lake Turkana, between El Molo bay and Mount Kulal. [2] Unlike their surrounding neighbors, the El Molo do not depend on livestock for livelihood. Fish is their main diet, but they occasionally they eat crocodile, turtle, and hippos. The population has been growing: 84 people were recorded in 1934, 143 people in 1973, approximately 200 in 1976. [10] Counts by fieldworkers gave 613 in 2008 and approximately 700 by 2012; a much larger number of 2840 was reported in the Kenyan 2009 national census. [12] According to the 2019 census, the ethnic population is about 1,100 [2] and the population is decreasing yearly.

Language shift

The language and most of the culture has been lost to assimilation from surrounding neighbors. Native transmission of El Molo largely ceased during the first half of the 20th century. [13] The people at all ages now speak primarily Samburu, a Maasai language (dialect) of Kenya. Only eight fluent speakers, four men and four women aged over 50, were left by 1976. [10] According to the community, the last “good” speaker, Kaayo, died in 1999, [14] but it is still spoken. [15]

Present day

The remaining few speakers of the language are fighting to keep the language alive. There is still a considerable quantity of preserved vocabulary for the language itself. The original Cushitic-Elmolo can be divided into items of basic vocabulary (such as body parts, numerals, names of plants and animals, and kinship terms). The Samburu dialect is now spoken in substitute of El Molo. All Cushitic material has lost its original phonology and morphosyntax, which have been adapted to Samburu. Present-day El Molo thus follows the phonological and morphological rules of Samburu.

Attempt at revitalization

In 1995 the “Elmolo Development Group” (EDG) was established to promote self-reliance among the Elmolo people especially in an attempt for revitalization. In this there also was an Elmolo language revival program that had begun. Founder and chairman, Michael Basili, of the Gura Pau was a teacher and later a schoolmaster and Education Officer of the Loiyangalani Division. He retired in 2006 and this is when he began to attempt to reinstate El Molo as the language of the community through school teaching. Basil and his collogues collected any further linguistic and anthropological data. [16] Efforts were dropped in 2012 because it was difficult to implement and extend Cushitic lexical material as it was limited, or its knowledge was too unevenly spread among the community to be any help. Another thing discovered was how the El Molo people will not disclose themselves the population of their community. They believe that disclosing their numbers endangers them more, since over the years they have been assimilated by their surrounding communities.

Impacts of language loss

With the language endangerment of El Molo, as with other languages there is a possibility of a loss of undiscovered and unique knowledge that is still yet to be explored. The names a language bestows upon objects, plants or animals go beyond mere labels, but rather include a great deal of information about the proper place this community view this animal in the world, and can reveal how a culture imagines the proper place for these creatures in the wild. [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cushitic languages</span> Branch of Afroasiatic native to East Africa

The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As of 2012, the Cushitic languages with over one million speakers were Oromo, Somali, Beja, Afar, Hadiyya, Kambaata, and Sidama.

Ongota is a moribund language of southwest Ethiopia. UNESCO reported in 2012 that out of a total ethnic population of 115, only 12 elderly native speakers remained, the rest of their small village on the west bank of the Weito River having adopted the Tsamai language instead. The default word order is subject–object–verb. The classification of the language is obscure.

Lowland East Cushitic is a group of roughly two dozen diverse languages of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. Its largest representatives are Oromo and Somali.

The Maa languages are a group of closely related Eastern Nilotic languages spoken in parts of Kenya and Tanzania by more than a million speakers. They are subdivided into North and South Maa. The Maa languages are related to the Lotuko languages spoken in South Sudan.

The Yaaku are a people who are said to have lived in regions of southern Ethiopia and central Kenya, possibly through to the 18th century. The language they spoke is today called Yaakunte. The Yaaku assimilated a hunter-gathering population, whom they called Mukogodo, when they first settled in their place of origin and the Mukogodo adopted the Yaakunte language. However, the Yaaku were later assimilated by a food producing population and they lost their way of life. The Yaakunte language was kept alive for sometime by the Mukogodo who maintained their own hunter-gathering way of life, but they were later immersed in Maasai culture and adopted the Maa language and way of life. The Yaakunte language is today facing extinction but is undergoing a revival movement. In the present time, the terms Yaaku and Mukogodo, are used to refer to a population living in Mukogodo forest west of Mount Kenya.

Yaaku is an endangered Afroasiatic language of the Cushitic branch, spoken in Kenya. Speakers are all older adults.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rendille people</span> Cushitic-speaking group from Kenya

The Rendille are a Cushitic ethnic group inhabiting the Eastern Province of Kenya.

Kenya is a multilingual country. The two official languages of Kenya, Swahili and English are widely spoken as lingua francas; however, including second-language speakers, Swahili is more widely spoken than English. Swahili is a Bantu language native to East Africa and English is inherited from British colonial rule.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Languages of Ethiopia</span>

The languages of Ethiopia include the official languages of Ethiopia, its national and regional languages, and a large number of minority languages, as well as foreign languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daasanach people</span> Cushitic ethnic group in Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan

The Daasanach are an ethnic group inhabiting parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan. Their main homeland is in the Debub Omo Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region, adjacent to Lake Turkana. According to the 2007 national census, they number 48,067 people, of whom 1,481 are urban dwellers.

Daasanach is a Cushitic language spoken by the Daasanach in Ethiopia, South Sudan and Kenya whose homeland is along the Lower Omo River and on the shores of Lake Turkana.

The (Western) Omo–Tana or Arboroid languages belong to the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia and Kenya.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aweer language</span> Lowland East Cushitic language of eastern Kenya

Aweer (Aweera), also known as Boni, is a Cushitic language of Eastern Kenya. The Aweer people, known by the arguably derogatory exonym "Boni," are historically a hunter-gatherer people, traditionally subsisting on hunting, gathering, and collecting honey. Their ancestral lands range along the Kenyan coast from the Lamu and Ijara Districts into Southern Somalia's Badaade District.

Dizin is an Omotic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by the Dizi people, primarily in the Maji woreda of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region, located in southwestern Ethiopia. The 2007 census listed 33,927 speakers. A population of 17,583 was identified as monolinguals in 1994.

The Omo–Tana languages are a branch of the Cushitic family and are spoken in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya. The largest member is Somali. There is some debate as to whether the Omo–Tana languages form a single group, or whether they are individual branches of Lowland East Cushitic. Blench (2006) restricts the name to the Western Omo–Tana languages, and calls the others Macro-Somali.

The Ethiopian language area is a hypothesized linguistic area that was first proposed by Charles A. Ferguson, who posited a number of phonological and morphosyntactic features that were found widely across Ethiopia and Eritrea, including the Ethio-Semitic, Cushitic and Omotic languages but not the Nilo-Saharan languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arbore people</span> Ethiopian ethnic group

The Arbore are an ethnic group living in southern Ethiopia, near Lake Chew Bahir. The Arbore people are pastoralists. With a total population of 6,850, the Abore population is divided into four villages, named: Gandareb, Kulaama, Murale, and Eegude.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">El Molo people</span> Ethnic group in Kenya

The El Molo, also known as Elmolo, Dehes, Fura-Pawa and Ldes, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the northern Eastern Province of Kenya. They historically spoke the El Molo language as a mother tongue, an Afro-Asiatic language of the Cushitic branch, and now most El Molo speak Samburu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cushitic-speaking peoples</span> Collection of ethnic groups residing in East Africa

Cushitic-speaking peoples are the ethnolinguistic groups who speak Cushitic languages natively. Today, Cushitic languages are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north and south in Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania.

Proto-Cushitic is the reconstructed proto-language common ancestor of the Cushitic language family. Its words and roots are not directly attested in any written works, but have been reconstructed through the comparative method, which finds regular similarities between languages not explained by coincidence or word-borrowing, and extrapolates ancient forms from these similarities.

References

  1. 1 2 "El Molo in Kenya". BBC News. Retrieved 9 January 2020.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 El Molo at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed Access logo transparent.svg
  3. ↑ PawankaFund (2021-12-16). "El-molo language revival through learning, use and research". Pawankafund. Retrieved 2024-06-09.
  4. ↑ Tosco, Mauro (2012-01-01). "What Terminal Speakers Can Do to Their Language: the Case of Elmolo". Federico Corriente, Gregorio del Olmo Lete, Ángeles Vicente & Juan-Pablo Vita (Eds.), Dialectology of the Semitic Languages. Proceedings of the IV Meeting on Comparative Semitics, Zaragoza 6/9-11/2010 ("Aula Orientalis – Supplementa 27"). Sabadell (Barcelona): Editorial AUSA: 2012: 131-143.
  5. ↑ Sobiana 1980, p. 297.
  6. ↑ Hayward 1984, p. 38.
  7. ↑ "El Molo in Kenya". Joshua Project. Retrieved 9 March 2018.
  8. ↑ Lamberti, Marcello (1991). "Cushitic and Its Classifications". Anthropos. 86 (4/6): 552–561. JSTOR   40463677.
  9. ↑ "Fear of Extinction as the El Molo Numbers Drop" . Retrieved 9 March 2018.
  10. 1 2 3 Heine 1980, p. 175.
  11. ↑ Heine, Bernd. Elmolo. The Non-Bantu Languages of Kenya.
  12. ↑ Tosco 2015, p. 101.
  13. ↑ Tosco, Mauro (2012). "What Terminal Speakers Can Do to Their Language: the Case of Elmolo". Federico Corriente, Gregorio del Olmo Lete, Ángeles Vicente & Juan-Pablo Vita (Eds.), Dialectology of the Semitic Languages. Proceedings of the Iv Meeting on Comparative Semitics, Zaragoza 6/9-11/2010 ("Aula Orientalis – Supplementa 27"). Sabadell (Barcelona): Editorial Ausa: 131–143.
  14. ↑ Tosco 2015, p. 199.
  15. ↑ "Kenya's El-Molo people: 'I'm worried our language will disappear'" . Retrieved 2024-07-30.
  16. ↑ FEAR OF EXTINCTION AS THE EL MOLO DROP allAfrica.com, March 12, 2010 NEWS, 2pp database : NewsBank
  17. ↑ Harrison, K. David (2008). When languages die: the extinction of the world's languages and the erosion of human knowledge (1. issued as paperback ed.). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. ISBN   978-0-19-537206-9.

Bibliography

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.