Nipate
Forum => Kenya Discussion => Topic started by: Kim Jong-Un's Pajama Pants on July 23, 2017, 06:22:22 PM
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If you listen, you know it's not Swahili, but you understand a great deal of it.
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That video reminded me of this time I went to Lamu for a wedding in this small community and was confronted with a language I felt sure was one I didn' know at all. 2/3 days later, I started picking out words and by the week's end, I understood it easily. It was a very weird Swahili with different sounds than the 'regular' Swa in so many places. For the first 2 days I was insisting to my *host* that that was no swahili her people were speaking and she was just pulling my leg :D. I was as lost as I would be in a place like for example Thailand or Angola. So strange.
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That video reminded me of this time I went to Lamu for a wedding in this small community and was confronted with a language I felt sure was one I didn' know at all. 2/3 days later, I started picking out words and by the week's end, I understood it easily. It was a very weird Swahili with different sounds than the 'regular' Swa in so many places. For the first 2 days I was insisting to my guest that that was no swahili her people were speaking and she was just pulling my leg :D . I was as lost as I would be in a place like for example Thailand or Angola. So strange.
Fascinating. It must have set you in mood where you are expecting Swahili and then you get the occasional curve-ball that leaves you befuddled. There are few of those folks at the coast. Most are Mijikenda - as is this Segeju group. And they don't move around a lot.
Those weird sounding languages can be considered dialects of one language that includes Swahili itself - I think there is no hard and fast rule.
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Their counting is similar to Gikuyu, among other words they are using. Murungu was also used in old Gikuyu for God before Ngai was adopted from the Maasai Enkai .
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Their counting is similar to Gikuyu, among other words they are using. Murungu was also used in old Gikuyu for God before Ngai was adopted from the Maasai Enkai .
Yep. They are in the same branch of Bantu languages. Northeast Bantu languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Bantu_languages)