Sabaot language
Kalenjin language spoken in Kenya and Uganda
| Sabaot | |
|---|---|
| Sebei | |
| Native to | Kenya/Uganda |
| Region | Mount Elgon |
| Ethnicity | Sabaot people/Sebei people |
Native speakers | 240,000 (2009 census)[1] |
Language family | Nilo-Saharan?
|
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | spy |
| Glottolog | saba1262 |
Sabaot (Sebei) is a Kalenjin language of Kenya. The Sabaot people live around Mount Elgon in both Kenya and Uganda. The hills of their homeland gradually rise from an elevation of 5,000 to 14,000 feet. The Kenya–Uganda border goes straight through the mountain-top, cutting the Sabaot homeland into two halves.[2]
Grammar
Typical of Nilotic languages, Sabaot uses advanced tongue root (ATR) to express some morphological operations:
kɔ̀ɔmnyɔɔnɔɔté
ka-
PAST-
a-
1SG-
mnyaan
be.sick
-aa
-STAT
-tɛ
-DIR
-ATR
-IMPERF
ka- a- mnyaan -aa -tɛ -ATR
PAST- 1SG- be.sick -STAT -DIR -IMPERF
'I went being sick (but I am not sick now).' Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);
káámnyáánáátɛ́
ka-
PAST-
'I
a-
1SG-
became
mnyaan
be.sick
sick
-aa
-STAT
while
-tɛ
-DIR
going
away
(and
I'm
still
sick)'.
ka- a- mnyaan -aa -tɛ
PAST- 1SG- be.sick -STAT -DIR
'I became sick while going away (and I'm still sick)'.
[3] Mismatch in the number of words between lines: 5 word(s) in line 1, 5 word(s) in line 2, 10 word(s) in line 3 (help); Unknown glossing abbreviation(s) (help);
References
Sabaot SIDO Website:[4]
- ^ Sabaot at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ "The Sabaot of Kenya" (PDF). Joshua Project. 1991. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-07-01.
- ^ Payne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists. Cambridge University Press. p. 29.
- ^ "Home". sabaots.com.
- v
- t
- e
Part of the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family
Northern k languages | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||||||
Southern n languages | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italics indicate extinct languages
Authority control databases: National  |
|
|---|
