Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T22:34:11.631Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Linguistic No-Man's Land

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Extract

This article deals with an area about the size of England, Scotland, and Wales which, even to this day, must be regarded as relatively still unknown to the outside world. Little visited by Europeans, it seems to be the gathering-place of a welter of obscure tribes and sections of tribes, speaking a bewildering diversity of languages. In the last hundred years it has seen various explorers and a few anthropologists, and has lately been administered by government officials; and it is to these people that we must look for information which sometimes includes linguistic data. Only one Christian mission station has been established, and no portion of the Bible has been translated into any language of this area.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 1945 , pp. 188 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1945

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 188 note 1 See , Seligman, Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan, pp. 421–3;Google Scholar, Evans-Pritchard, ‘Ethnological Observations in Dar Fung’ (S.N.R. 1932), pp. 53 ff.Google Scholar; , Tucker, Survey of Language Groups in the Southern Sudan (B.S.O.S. 1935), p. 880Google Scholar.

page 190 note 1 Maps differ as to whether the Dabus and Yabus rivers are one and the same.

page 190 note 2 ‘The Koma’ (S.N.R. 1938).

page 192 note 1 Vocabularies from Conti Rossini, Montandon, Cerulli, and Moreno.

page 194 note 1 Information supplied by J. Wild, D. C. Gulu, Uganda.

page 194 note 2 Janson Smith gives Ngijie (Giye) as the name of the western section of the Karamojong.

page 194 note 3 Janson Smith gives Giye (Jiye) as the name of one section of the Toposa, and Ngijie as a section of the Turkana.

page 195 note 1 Seligman, , Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan, pp. 254–6.Google Scholar

page 195 note 2 Montandon, Au Pays Ghimirra; Cerulli, Etiopia Occidentale, &c.

page 197 note 1 Accoiding to Mr. Lewis, there are no Murle permanently living with the Anuak, only a few captives and visitors during the dry weather to Anuak water-holes.

page 198 note 1 The prefix nyi-, ni-, ŋi, occurs in many tribal names, and according to Mr. Lewis means ‘people’ (cf. Nyikoroma, Nitirmaka, Ngijie, &c).

page 201 note 1 The ‘Giabà’ however must be the so-called Jaba (the name being probably a geographical term) between the Maji and the Suri, who call themselves Yafalla. They ate probably related to the Maji and speak a Hamitic language which, however, differs from Maji.

page 204 note 1 On his first expedition, Donaldson Smith followed the tributary under the impression that it was the main river.