Looking for a spouse in mwera folk narratives

Folk narratives do reflect on the reality of life of those who tell them, even though it is frequently not rendered in a straightforward but rather in a subtle and sometimes distorted way (cf. Möhlig et al. (eds), 1988; Röhrich, 1964; Simmons, 1961; Steinbrich, 1997). In the rural areas of Africa these aspects of reality are up to now characterised by social prescriptions and cultural rules which put the individual under constraints one can not easily escape. The medium of folk narratives allows for some imaginative freedom in respect to these prescribed ways. This holds especially true in respect to marriage and marital life, where individual needs and desires can easily clash with social rules and thus lead to conflict. The importance of this topic is indicated by the large number of African folk narratives which deal with it. This also applies to the narratives of the Mwera who live as cultivators in the Southeast of the Republic of Tanzania. The Mwera speak a bantu language and they still narrate their folk stories in their villages. The performance of stories – the Mwera call them ndango – predominantly takes place in a family setting, where women, men and to a lesser extend children can act as narrators. Between 1987 and 1991 I recorded some series of ndango in a kind of “induced natural context” (cf. Goldstein, 1964: 80 ff.). Each series comprises a number of narratives by different narrators, women and men, the women being in the majority. Many of the stories are dealing with special problems of marital life, like sterility, unfaithfulness and the difficult relationships with in-laws. But quite a number of stories concentrate on the period preceding marriage, the time of looking for and choosing a spouse. In this article I will focus on these stories

Newspaper serials in Tanzania: the case of Eric James Shigongo (with an interview)

Newspaper serials have a long history in Tanzania. Since the privatisation of media in the 1990s, the number of newspapers and tabloids has multiplied, and serials have become abundant. I would dare to say that they are the most popular form of fiction at the moment in terms of quantity of readers. They are especially prevalent in the tabloids, where there often are more than three stories being serialised at a time. Some authors publish serials only occasionally, while there are also established serial writers such as Sultan Tamba, Faki A. Faki and Hamees M. Suba.However, the most prominent writer specialising in newspaper serials is Eric James Shigongo, who probably is also the most prolific author of popular literature of the last decade in Tanzania altogether. In his case, novel writing has reached a new quality as a well organised, apparently successful, self-owned business

English versus Swahili: language choice in Bongo Flava as expression of cultural and economic changes in Tanzania

Since around 2011, Bongo Flava musicians use significantly more English in their lyrics than in the previous years, particularly in love songs. This article documents and describes this new trend and discusses the reasons for the change in language use. It reveals that the new development is indicative of a transformation of Bongo Flava towards pop, caused by changes in the domestic market on the one hand and by a growing outward-looking market orientation on the other. These changes are demanding new ways of constructing identities through the use of language.Tangu mnamo mwaka 2011, wasanii wa Bongo Flava walio wengi hutumia kiasi kikubwa cha Kiinge¬reza katika nyimbo zao ukilinganisha na miaka ya nyuma. Hali hiyo inajionyesha zaidi katika nyimbo za mapenzi. Makala hii inaeleza mwelekeo huo mpya na kujadili sababu zake. Inatoa hoja ya kwamba mwelekeo huo umesababishwa hasa na mabadiliko katika soko la muziki ndani na nje ya Tanzania, hasa katika bara la Afrika. Mabadiliko hayo ndiyo yanayosababisha kutumia zaidi lugha ya Kiingereza

Review: the Rosetta Stone Kiswahili: A Language learning program on CD-ROM for Windows 9x or 2000 (with sound card) and Mac OS 7.0 or higher. Fairfield Language Technologies.

`The Rosetta Stone Language Library` is a language learning software developed by the American company Fairfield Language Technologies which allows users to learn a foreign language with their computer without the aid of an instructor. The program promises its users they can learn a language faster and with more ease than ever before, without having to learn vocabulary or grammatical rules. Once having completed Levels I and II, learners should be able to make themselves understood in the new language using a basic vocabulary of roughly 3000 words. Both these levels are to be completed within a time frame of one to two years, and the results should be the equivalent of five years of conventional school instruction. Since 1993, a Swahili language course has been featured in The Rosetta Stone for which only Level I is currently available. With regard to the Swahili course, it must be asked if this design can work with a class language just as it does with an Indo-European gender language. The second question addresses the cultural adequacy of the contexts, or more specifically, of cultural knowledge, which must not be excluded from modern language instruction

Special issue: Lugha ya mitaani in Tanzania - the poetics and sociology of a young urban style of speaking: with a dictionary comprising 1100 words and phrases

Swahili has been moulded in a long process by many factors over many centuries (Chiraghdin & Mnyampala 1977, Khalid 1977, Nurse & Spear 1985, Shariff 1973, Whiteley 1969). One of the latest chapters in its history is the standardisation and implementation as national and official language in Tanzania after independence.The National Swahili Council was given the task of further developing as well as guarding the standard form in textbooks for schools, in literature, in music texts, and in radio and television broadcasting. However, while Standard Swahili was taught in schools and writtenin books and newspapers, people in town quarters where Swahili was spoken developed and used a colloquial style of speech by enriching the standard form with “slang” expressions and lexemes.Recently, many people in Tanzania speak of “lugha za mitaani” (‘languages of the town quarters’, or ‘street languages’), using the plural to point to the fact that there exists a whole range of varieties of non-standard language, depending on local and social factors. The more recent development of lugha za mitaani reflects very much the social, economic, and political liberalisation in Tanzania, which started in the late 1980s. Little research has been done on the complex of these locally coloured colloquial Swahili variants, and we hope that our work will prepare the ground for further, more detailed studies. Since we acknowledge the existence of variants, we will use Lugha ya Mitaani (henceforth abbreviated LyM) to denote the phenomenon as such, whereas we will apply the term Lugha za Mitaani (henceforth abbreviated LzM) when we speak of the complex of variants.The primary characteristic of lugha za mitaani in general is that they deviate from Standard Kiswahili by their special lexicon which is in a constant process of rapid renovation. This is done by way of deliberate manipulation of existing lexical items, as an expression of an attitude of jocular and provocative violation of linguistic norms.Looking into the linguistic makeup, it is quite clear that Lugha ya Mitaani is not an independent language, but a sociolect or register of Kiswahili. The geographical centre of the ongoing creation and recreation of linguistic elements is Dar es Salaam. From there the linguistic items spread very quickly into the interior and reach even remote places such as Nachingwea (Lindi region) and Kurio (Dodoma region), where we conducted our research. The remarkably high mobility of the youth in Tanzania plays a crucial role in this process, but also the media, especially music, radio, video, and the yellow press contribute a lot to the rapid diffusion of Lugha ya Mitaani-terms. This article is based on research conducted in Tanzania between 2000 and 2006 and approaches the phenomenon of Lugha ya Mitaani from different angles. A substantial part of the field research was lexicographic in nature, complemented by ethnographic methods (see chapter two). The analysis focuses on form, function, mediation and general comparative sociolinguistic issues of Lugha ya Mitaani.:1. Introduction: Lugha ya Mitaani 1 1.1 History of colloquial non-standard Swahili speech forms 1 1.2 Special forms of Lugha ya Mitaani 4 1.2.1 Campus Swahili 5 1.2.2 Secret codes derived from Swahili 5 1.2.3 Lugha ya vijana wa vijiweni 6 1.2.4 The language of daladalas 8 1.3 Overview of the article 9 2. Methodology 10 2.1 Field research 10 2. 2 Acknowledgements 12 2. 3 The making of the dictionary 12 3. Sociolinguistics of Lugha ya Mitaani 13 3.1 Lugha ya Mitaani as youth language 13 3.2 Knowledge, use and attitudes 14 3.3 Diachronic aspects of Lugha ya Mitaani 17 4. Lexical elaboration 18 4.1 Humans and social relations 20 4.1.1 Humans 20 4.1.2 Women 21 4.1.3 Men 23 4.1.4 Homosexuals 23 UTA REUSTER-JAHN & ROLAND KIEßLING 4.1.5 Social relationship 24 4.1.6 Social status 24 4.2 Communication 24 4.3 Body & Appearance 25 4.4 Economy, Money & Occupation 26 4.5 Sex 27 4.6 Drugs & Alcohol 28 4.7 Movement & Vehicles 28 4.8 Evaluative terms 29 4.9 Experience 30 4.10 Trouble & Violence 30 4.11 Crime & Police 30 4.12 Food 31 4.13 Disease 31 4.14 Geography & Place 32 4.15 Education 32 4.16 Sports 33 4.17 Weapons 33 4.18 Cultural innovation 33 4.19 Time 33 5. The poetic making of Lugha ya Mitaani 34 5.1 Hyperbole and dysphemism 35 5.2 Humoristic effects 37 5.3 Metaphors 39 LUGHA YA MITAANI IN TANZANIA 5.4 Cognitive motivation 41 5.5 Onomastic synecdoche 43 5.6 Multiple semantic extensions 44 5.7 Folk etymologies 45 5.8 Phraseologisms 46 5.9 Manipulations of form 50 5.10 Donor languages 52 6. The construction of youth identities in discourse practice 53 7. Lugha ya Mitaani and the media 60 8. Lugha ya Mitaani in a historical perspective 66 8.1 Lugha ya Mitaani in contrast to other phenomena of language birth 67 8.1.1 Pidginisation and creolisation 67 8.1.2 Codeswitching 67 8.1.3 Lugha ya Mitaani and Sheng 70 8.2 Semantic change 75 8.3 Sociosymbolic change 76 9. Conclusion 78 Abbreviations 79 Bibliography 80 Appendix 1: Lugha ya Mitaani texts written by John Degera 88 Appendix 2: Diachronic change in the campus lexicon at Teacher Training College Nachingwea 90 Appendix 3: Dictionary of Lugha ya Mitaani 9

In memoriam: Thomas Geider. 29.4.1953 - 15.10.2010

Obituary in memory of Thomas Geider, a former editior of the Swahili Foru

The Mwera lamellophone Luliimba

The lamellophone of the Makonde/Mwera type from south-eastern Tanzania and north-eastern Mozambique is a particular member of the family of lamellophones in Africa. It has been described by Margot Dias (1982, 1986, 1988) and Gerhard Kubik (1996, 1998), but until recently had not been studied in a performance context. This type of lamellophone has drawn scholarly interest because of its uniqueness. Kubik assumes that it could be the remnant of a small cradle area of lamellophones with metal keys in the lower Rovuma valley, apart from the large metal-keyed lamellophones found in Zimbabwe and the lower Zambezi valley (Kubik 1998:24 f). Furthermore, Kubik et al. point to a similarity of shape between Indonesian metallophones of the saron type and the Makonde/Mwera type of lamellophone, in terms of the curved box resonator and the roof-like top of the instruments

Let`s go party!: Discourse and self-portrayal in the Bongo-Fleva-Song Mikasi

For over a decade now, Bongo Fleva has been the dominant category of popular music in Tanzania, surpassing Muziki wa Dansi (dance music) and Taarab in terms of its presence in the media. Bongo Fleva has become deversified in the last years and at present includes elements of traditional music as well as popular dance music, both of African and Western origin (Raab 2006: 43 ff.). As a result, contemporary Bongo Fleva is stylistically complex. Ther lyrics of Bongo Fleva are specifically determined by 1) the use of Swahili youth language and slang expressions. 2) the representation of modern and young lifestyles, and 3) socio-critical contens with pedagocial and moralistic tendencies. The lyrics of Bongo Fleva are marked by youth discourse which is most important for the construction of youth identities. While Bongo Fleva text with dialogic structure seem to continue the older tradition of Muziki wa Dansi, the dramatic texts remind of the way folk narratives are told in Tanzania. As the dramatic Bongo Fleva texts make use of direct speech, often of several characters, and without introduction, it seems that traditional techniques of story-telling have an effect on Bongo Fleva rap lyrics. In this article a rap text of this kind, Mikasi (\"Sex\"), released in 2004 by Bongo Fleva artist Ngwair, will be analysed with regard to its form, content and function. As it conteain different roles and dialogues, it is suitable for the investigation of youths`talk. A special focus will be put on the self-portrayal of the youths in the dialogues of the song, and on the question how boasting and dissing is performed in a dialogic text