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Ogiek
(also known as Okiek or Akiek; pronounced
[ogiek])
is a
Southern Nilotic language cluster of the
Kalenjin family spoken or once spoken by the
Ogiek
peoples, scattered groups of hunter-gatherers in Southern
Kenya
and Northern
Tanzania. Most if not all Ogiek speakers have assimilated to
cultures of surrounding peoples: the Akiek in northern Tanzania now
speak
Maasai and the Akiek of Kinare, Kenya now speak
Gikuyu.
Ndorobo
is a term considered derogatory, occasionally used to refer to
various groups of hunter-gatherers in this area, including the Ogiek.
There are three main Ogiek varieties
that have been documented, though there are several dozen named
Ogiek local groups:
- Kinare, spoken around the
Kenyan place Kinare on the eastern slope of the
Rift Valley. The Kinare dialect is extinct, and Rottland
(1982:24-25) reports that he found a few old men from Kinare in
1976, married with
Kikuyu women and integrated in the Kikuyu culture, whose
parents had lived in the forests around Kinare as honey-gathering
Ogiek. They called themselves /akié:k pa kínáre/, i.e. Ogiek of
Kinare.
- Sogoo (or Sokóň),
spoken in the southern Mau forest between the Amala and
Ewas Ng'iro rivers (Heine 1973). The actual status of the
Sogoo dialect is unclear.
Bernd Heine included some Sogoo vocabulary in his 'Vokabulare
ostafrikanischer Restsprachen' (1973).
Franz Rottland, following Heine's directions, came across a
Sogoo settlement of ten round huts in 1977, and reported that he
was told that there were several other Sogoo settlements in the
immediate surroundings (Rottland 1982:25). The Sogoo speakers had
contact with the Kipsikii, another Kalenjin people, and were able
to point out lexical differences between their own language and
Kipsikii. Ten years later,
Gabriele Sommer (1992:389) classified the Sogoo dialect as
being threatened by extinction. The Sogoo variety was recorded in
an area where Kipchornwonek Okiek reside (Sogoo is the name of a
settlement/center there). Extensive texts from naturally occurring
conversation recorded in both Kipchornwonek communities and
Kaplelach Okiek communities are available in the publications of
Dr. Corinne A. Kratz.
- Akiek (or Akie),
spoken in Tanzania in the southern part of
Arusha region. Akiek is spoken by various little groups in the
steppes south of Arusha, which is the territory of the
Maasai. Akiek is probably dying out because many of its
speakers have shifted to, or are shifting to,
Maasai language. Maguire (1948:10) already reported a high
level of bilinguality in Maasai, and remarked that "[t]he language
of the Mósiro [an Akiek clan name] is dying, as any
language except Masai tends to do in the Masai country." In the
1980s, however, Corinne Kratz and James Woodburn visited Akie
groups in Tanzania during survey research and found that they were
fully bilingual in Akie and Maasai.
See also
References
- Heine, Bernd (1973) 'Vokabulare
ostafrikanischer Restsprachen', Afrika und Übersee, 57, 1,
pp. 38–49.
- Kratz, Corinne A. (1981) "Are the
Okiek really Masai? or Kipsigis? or Kikuyu?" Cahiers d'Études
Africaines. Vol. 79 XX:3, pp. 355-68.
- Kratz, Corinne A. (1986) 'Ethnic
interaction, economic diversification and language use: a report
on research with Kaplelach and Kipchornwonek Okiek', Sprache
und Geschichte in Afrika, 7, 189—226.
- Kratz, Corinne A. (1989) "Okiek
Potters and their Wares." In Kenyan Pots and Potters.
Edited by J. Barbour and S. Wandibba. Nairobi: Oxford University
Press.
- Kratz, Corinne A. (1994)
Affecting Performance: Meaning, Movement and Experience in Okiek
Women's Initiation. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution
Press.
- Kratz, Corinne A. (1999) "Okiek of
Kenya." In Foraging Peoples: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary
Hunter-Gatherers. Edited by Richard Lee and Richard Daly.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 220-224.
- Kratz, Corinne A. (2000)"Gender,
Ethnicity, and Social Aesthetics in Maasai and Okiek Beadwork." In
Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa: Gender, Culture, and the Myth
of the Patriarchal Pastoralist. Edited by Dorothy Hodgson.
Oxford: James Currey Publisher, pp. 43-71.
- Kratz, Corinne A. (2001) "Conversations
and Lives." In African Words, African Voices: Critical
Practices in Oral History. Edited by Luise White, Stephan
Miescher, and David William Cohen. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, pp. 127-161.
- Kratz, Corinne A. (2002) The
Ones That Are Wanted: Communication and the Politics of
Representation in a Photographic Exhibition. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
- Maguire, R.A.J. (1948) 'Il-Torobo',
Tanganyika Notes and Records, 25, 1–27.
- Rottland, Franz (1982) Die
Südnilotischen Sprachen: Beschreibung, Vergelichung und
Rekonstruktion (Kölner Beiträge zur Afrikanistik vol. 7).
Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. (esp. pp. 26, 138-139)
- Sommer, Gabriele {1992) 'A survey
on language death in Africa', in Brenzinger, Matthias (ed.)
Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special
Reference to East Africa. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter,
pp. 301–417.
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