Masaba ( Lumasaaba ), sometimes known as Gisu ( Lugisu ) after one of its dialects, is a Bantu language spoken by more than two million people in East Africa. The Gisu dialect in eastern Uganda is mutually intelligible with Bukusu , spoken by ethnic Luhya in western Kenya. Masaba is the local name of Mount Elgon and the name of the son of the ancestor of the Gisu tribe. Like other Bantu languages, Lumasaba nouns are divided into several sets of noun classes . These are similar to the genders in Germanic and Romance languages , except that instead of the usual two or three, there are around eighteen different noun classes. The language has a quite complex verb morphology.
7-504: Varieties of Masaba are as follows: Dadiri is spoken in the north, Gisu in the center, and Buya in the center and south of Masaba territory in Uganda. Bukusu is spoken in Kenya, separated from ethnic Masaba by Nilotic languages on the border. See Bukusu dialect for details of one variety of Masaba. Masaba has a basic 5-vowel system consisting of /i, e, a, o, u/. Bukusu dialect Bukusu
14-821: Is a dialect of the Masaba language spoken by the Bukusu tribe of the Luhya people of western Kenya . It is one of several ethnically Luhya dialects ; however, it is more closely related to the Gisu dialect of Masaaba in eastern Uganda (and to the other Luhya dialect of Tachoni) than it is to other languages spoken by the Luhya. Several consonants undergo fortition after nasal consonants: [Îē, w → b, j → dĘ, l, r → d] ; Mutonyi (2000) postulates that Bukusu has no phonemic voiced plosives. The language has three main variations: Of these,
21-517: The Bukusu by a shared language and a common culture. Intermarriage between the Bukusu and these Ugandan tribes is very common and is, in fact, encouraged by the respective communities. As a result, many Bukusu have close relatives among the Gisu and Masaaba, and vice versa. During the Ugandan civil wars of the 1970s, many of the Gisu and Masaba left Uganda for Kenya, mainly to live with Bukusu relatives around
28-479: The Bungoma area. After the wars ended, a large number did not return to Uganda, having already started new lives in Kenya. Their large dispersal among the Bukusu in that area has had a discernible influence on the Bukusu language in the Bungoma region. Native speakers of the language will easily identify someone from the area based on their speech. Of particular note is the substitution of R with L , so that, for example,
35-612: The Kabras language, the term is rendered as 'eShindu'. The Bukusu east of Webuye town will usually say 'eSindu', thus adopting the prefix of the Kabras language while retaining the Bukusu root word 'Sindu' (as opposed to the Kabras root word, 'Shindu'). Because it borders the nilotic Kalenjin languages of the Pokot , Nandi and Sebei to the north, east and west, the Bukusu language spoken in Kitale area has largely retained its original form, save for
42-558: The language spoken around Kitale town is usually considered the purest form - this is because the other two dialects are significantly influenced by other dialects of the Luhya languages . The Bukusu tribe lives in Bungoma district , which borders Uganda to the west and Kakamega district of Kenya to the east . Across the border in Uganda live the Masaba and the Gisu , both closely related to
49-425: The verb 'khuufwara' (xuufwara) - to wear [clothes] is now pronounced 'khuufwala', as it is in the Gisu and Masaaba languages. The dialect spoken east of Webuye town is influenced by the neighbouring Kabras and Tachoni dialects of the Luhya language. This is particularly noticeable in the changes in noun prefixes: in the original Bukusu language, for example, the term 'something' would be rendered as 'siSindu'. In
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