Linguistic outcomes of sabaot/kiswahili contact in mt. Elgonsub-county, bungoma county, kenya

ABSTRACT 

This study is an analysis of lexical borrowing of nominals in Sabaot from Kiswahili. The two languages under study differ from each other in significant ways. Kiswahili for example is a language of the Niger-Congo family classified by Ethnologue as ISO 639-3: SWA (Lewis 2009) while on the other hand Sabaot belongs to the Southern Nilotic group who occupy the Mount Elgon area (Appleby, 1961).This research was guided by the following specific objectives; to investigate the spoken language of young,middle-aged and older Sabaot/Kiswahili bilingual speakers in order to identify and describe core and cultural borrowing in Sabaot from Kiswahili. Attempts werealso made to establish nonlinguistic factors that motivate the Sabaots to borrow from Kiswahili and finally the strategies that „Sumaneet Centre‟ has adopted to revitalize the Sabaot language were determined. This research was guided by two theories namely Borrowing Transfer Theory by Terence Odlin (1989) andEthnolinguistic Vitality Theory (EVT) by Giles and Taylor (1977). As a way of data collection, a wordlist and questionnaires were issued to 30Sabaot/Kiswahili bilinguals of Chepyuk ward in Bungoma County, Kenya. The results of the wordlist analysis indicatedthat there were extensive core borrowings of Kiswahili nouns into Sabaot language. The findings further showed that the core borrowing of nouns was more among the younger and middle-aged than among the older Sabaot/Kiswahili bilinguals. In addition, thefindings also revealed that the attitude of the younger and middle-aged werenegative towards Sabaot which threatens the survival of Sabaot language. Finally, the results further showed that,the „Sumaneet Centre‟ (a language nest) is playing an important role in trying to revitalizethe Sabaot language through documentation, teaching the Sabaot/Kiswahili bilinguals how to read, write and also creating more awareness amongSabaot/Kiswahili on the importance of Sabaot language through a radio station (Bikaab Koreet FM). This indicates thatthere is hope for theSabaot language to regain its vitality among its speakers.