The Gusii language (also known as Ekegusii) is a Bantu language spoken in Kisii and Nyamira counties in NyanzaKenya, whose headquarters is Kisii Town, (between the Kavirondo Gulf of Lake Victoria and the border with Tanzania). It is spoken natively by 2.2 million people (as of 2009), mostly among the Abagusii. Ekegusii has only two dialects: The Rogoro (upper-side) and Maate (lower-side) dialects. Phonologically, they differ in the articulation of /t/. Most of the variations existing between the two dialects are lexical. The two dialects can refer to the same object or thing using different terms. An example of this is the word for cat. While one dialect calls a cat ekemoni, the other calls it ekebusi (a word that comes from the sound used to call a cat in Gusii culture). Another illustrating example can be found in the word for sandals. While the Rogoro word for sandals is chisiripasi (a loanword from the English word "slippers"), the Maate dialect word is chitaratara (adapted from the sound made by sandals when one walks while wearing them). Many more lexical differences manifest in the language. The Maate dialect is spoken in Tabaka and Bogirango. Most of the other regions use the Rogoro dialect, which is also the standard dialect of Ekegusii.
Sounds
Vowels
Gusii has seven vowels. Vowel length is contrastive, i.e. the words 'bóra' to miss and 'bóóra' to say are distinguished by vowel length only.
In the table below, orthographic symbols are included between brackets if they differ from the IPA symbols. Note especially the use of ‘y’ for IPA /j/, common in African orthographies. When symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant.
The Gusii language has the consonant 'b' not realized as the bilabial stop as in 'bat' but as bilabial fricative as in words like baba, baminto, abana.
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1999. High Tone Spreading in Ekegusii Revisited: An Optimality Theoretic Account. Lingua, vol. 109, pp. 109–153.
Cammenga, Jelle
2002 Phonology and morphology of Ekegusii: a Bantu language of Kenya. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
Mreta, Abel Y.
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Nash, Carlos M.
2011. Tone in Ekegusii: A Description of Nominal And Verbal Tonology. University of California, Santa Barbara.
Nyauncho, Osinde K.
1988. Ekegusii morphophonology: an analysis of the major consonantal processes. University of Nairobi.
