Dictionary of the Kanuri Language 9067654124, 9789067654128

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Dictionary of the Kanuri Language

Publications in African Languages and Linguistics The aim of this series is to offer, at regular intervals, carefully worked out studies or collections of papers in African linguistics. In this way, it is hoped that important work can be brought to the attention of a wider linguistic audience including scholars w h o are not primarily concerned w i t h African linguistics but w h o w i s h to keep abreast of recent advances in the fields of historical linguistics, theoretical phonology and linguistic typology, all of which, incidentally, tend to rely rather heavily on African language data. At the same time, the editors intend to include occasional volumes w h i c h offer general accounts of major language groups, hoping that such surveys will be of assistance not only to linguists working on African languages but also to those w h o specialize in other areas. Throughout the series an attempt will be made to strike a healthy balance between theory oriented and data oriented research. Editors:

Advisory

George N. Clements Didier L. Goyvaerts

J o h n Goldsmith (Chicago) Claire Grégoire (Tervuren) Frank Heny (Middlebury, Vermont) Larry M. Hyman (Berkeley) William R. Leben (Stanford) Thilo C. Schadeberg (Leiden)

Other books in this

board:

series:

1. Ivan R. D i h o f f ( e d ). Current Approaches to African Linguistics (vol. 1) 2. Gerrit J. D i m m e n d a a l . The Turkana Language 3. G.N. C l e m e n t s and J. G o l d s m i t h (eds). Autosegmentai Studies in Bantu Tone 4. Koen Bogers, Harry van der Hulst and M a a r t e n M o u s (eds). The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals 5. J o n a t h a n Kaye, Hilda Koopman, D o m i n i q u e Sportiche and A n d r é Dugas (eds). Current Approaches to African Linguistics (vol. 2) 6. Gerrit J. D i m m e n d a a l (ed ). Current Approaches to African Linguistics (vol. 3) 7. David Odden (ed.). Current Approaches to African Linguistics (vol. 4) 8. Paul N e w m a n and Robert D. Botne. Current Approaches to African Linguistics (vol. 5) 9. Isabelle Haik and Laurice Tuller (eds). Current Approaches to African Linguistics (vol. 6) 10. M a r y M. Clark. The Tonal System of Igbo 11. J o h n P. H u t c h i s o n and Victor M a n f r e d i . Current Approaches to African Linguistics (vol. 7) 12. Paul N e w m a n . Nominal and Verbal Plurality in Chadic

Norbert Cyffer and John Hutchison (eds)

ii^k.

¥

1990 FORIS PUBLICATIONS Dordrecht - Holland/Providence Rl - U.S.A.

1990 UNIVERSITY OF MAIDUGURI Nigeria

Published

by:

Foris P u b l i c a t i o n s H o l l a n d P . O . Box 509 3300 A M D o r d r e c h t , T h e N e t h e r l a n d s Distributor

for the U.S.A.

and

Canada:

Foris P u b l i c a t i o n s U S A Inc. P . O . Box 5904 P r o v i d e n c e R . I . 02903 U.S.A.

CIP-DATA KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK, DEN H A A G Kanuri-English D i c t i o n a r y of t h e K a n u r i L a n g u a g e / N o r b e r t C y f f e r a n d J o h n H u t c h i s o n (eds). - D o r d r e c h t [etc.] : Foris ; M a i d u g u r i : University of M a i d u g u r i . - ( P u b l i c a t i o n s in A f r i c a n L a n g u a g e s a n d linguistics ; 13) ISBN 90-6765-412-4 S I S O afri 831 U D C (038) = 9 6 6 = 2 0 Subject heading: K a n u r i l a n g u a g e ; dictionaries.

Published in C o - o p e r a t i o n with T h e University of M a i d u g u r i , Nigeria ISBN 90 6765 412 4 ( P a p e r ) © 1990 F o r i s P u b l i c a t i o n s - D o r d r e c h t

N o p a r t of this p u b l i c a t i o n may be r e p r o d u c e d or t r a n s m i t t e d in a n y f o r m or by a n y m e a n s , electronic or m e c h a n i c a l , i n c l u d i n g p h o t o c o p y , r e c o r d i n g , or a n y i n f o r m a t i o n s t o r a g e a n d retrieval system, w i t h o u t permission f r o m the c o p y r i g h t o w n e r . Printed in the N e t h e r l a n d s by I C G Printing, D o r d r e c h t .

V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The present dictionary represents the culmination of the efforts of many people. The project was initially supported morally and administratively by the Centre for the Study of Nigerian Languages under the direction of Professor Paul Newman, and later under Dr. Abdulkadir Dandatti. Subsequent support was provided by the University of Maiduguri and by the Chair of the Department of Languages and Linguistics, Professor C.M.B. Brann. The advice and assistance of Shettima Bukar Abba and Tijani El-Miskin had a profound impact on the make-up of the dictionary, as did the incredible resources and knowledge of Wakkil Modu, who was the primary Kanuri language consultant throughout the project. Those working on the project were most enthusiastically supported by the Kanuri people of Maiduguri, without whose help the project would have been unrealizable. Their indefatigable patience under o u r relentless questioning brought many new words for the dictionary. Daily visits to our offices in the Borno Local Authority compound yielded an endless supply of new information. We greatly benefited from the support of the Borno Local Authority in the person of the Shehu of Borno. The then Waziri of Borno, the late Abba Sadiq, was most encoraging to us at all stages of our work. The Kanuri Language Board, under the chairmanship of Alhaji Idrissa Kadi, provided an official sounding board for the Kanuri language research that was carried out in Maiduguri during the 1970s. We are extremely grateful to Foris Publications for making it possible for this publication to finally see the light of day. John P. Hutchison (Tijani Gamboru) and Norbert Cyffer (Ali Gamboru)

vii

INTRODUCTION 1. HISTORY OF THE DICTIONARY OF THE KANURI LANGUAGE. The preparation of this dictionary was begun in 1974 and finally published in 1988. It was one of the first Kanuri research projects initiated by the Kanuri Research Unit of the Centre for the Study of Nigerian Languages. The Centre was then on Abdullahi Bayero College campus, and was part of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The Centre hired the two principal authors of this work in 1974, and they established its branch in Maiduguri for the purpose of carrying out research on Kanuri. As Research Fellows employed by the Centre, they chose as one of their first priority projects, that of developing a dictionary of the Kanuri language. At the time, Maiduguri (Yerwa) was already the capital of the North-Eastern State, and had become established as the major city of the Kanuri world in Nigeria, historically and synchronically. The dictionary project was later continued and completed under the auspices of the Department of Languages and Linguistics of the University of Maiduguri. The project followed immediately on the heels of the project establishing the Standard Kanuri Orthography (SKO). While this represents the first major attempt at producing a dictionary, there do exist some significant vocabularies such as that of S.W. Koelle which appeared in his Africant Native Literature or Proverbs, Tales, Fables, and Historical Fragments in the Kanuri or Bornu Language (1854), and that of J. Lukas in his A Study of the Kanuri Language: Grammar and Vocabulary (1937). These very significant works have certainly influenced the present dictionary. 2. THE STANDARD KANURI ORTHOGRAPHY. As recorded in this dictionary, written Kanuri is represented according to the the spelling rules and conventions which were established by the Standard Kanuri Orthography (SKO). This orthography was developed by the Kanuri Research Unit and the Kanuri Language Board, and officially adopted by the latter in 1975. The elaboration of the Standard Kanuri Orthography was carried out by the Orthography Committee of the Kanuri Language Board, under the Chairmanship of the late Waziri of Borno, Abba Sadiq. This dictionary will therefore not only serve as the first major bilingual dictionary of the language, but will also function as a reference book for the correct writing and spelling of the Kanuri language. The orthography is rooted in the Kanuri dialect of Maiduguri (Yerwa), which for many

DICTIONARY

OF THE KANURI

Vili

LANGUAGE

reasons has emerged as the widely recognized standard f o r m of Kanuri in Nigeria. In order to avoid ambiguity in meaning and to provide the correct pronunciation for the non-Kanuri speaker, tone marks have been added to the basic SKO representation of the words in this dictionary. The are not normally included in the SKO. 2.1. THE ALPHABET. Words for which there is a significant discrepancy between the orthographic (SKO) representation and the phonetic pronunciation are indicated first in the SKO, and second with a phonetic transcription. The phonetic symbols used in presenting the letters of the alphabet of the SKO are the following: B / d i y i] n 3 A [

]

I

voiceless bilabial fricative voiceless alveolar palatal fricative voiced alveolar palatal affricate retroflex lateral voiced velar fricative velar nasal palatalized nasal mid-central vowel lowered central vowel phonetic transcription vowel length nasalization glottal stop

2.1.1. THE VOWELS. phonetic transcription:

[a] [A] [e] [a] [i] [o] [u] a

SKO:

a

e

s

1

o

u

2.1.2. THE CONSONANTS.

SKO phonetic SKO 2

none b c d f f

[¿] [¿] [b] [£] [d] [f] []

^¿indimi] [¿Indi] [bara] [¿firn] [dà] [ f i to] [iI4>u]

word

meaning

kan'lndimi Indi bara cam da fato fufu

the second two hunt milk meat house lungs

IX

DICTIONARY OF THE KANURI LANGUAGE

g g h J k 1 1 m n ny P r s t w y 1 2

[g] [y] [h] W [k] [1] [1] [m] In] [n] [p] [r] [s] [t] [w] [yl

[gdro]

goro

kola nut

[Ciya] [hawfir]

clga hawar Je ka lambo kali musko na nyi

fly news rope stick leaf wet hand place

lapsal r0 sa fato rawa yikln

they load life time house uncle I give

M

[kS] [ldmbo] [kali] [miisko] [ni] [ni] [lApsfii] IT6]

[si] [f ¿to] [rrfwa] [yfkin]

you (sing.)

in medial position in word-initial position

2.2. THE SKO AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE KANURI SOUND SYSTEM. In developing the Standard Kanuri Orthography, special attention had to be given to a number of linguistic features and processes which have a great influence on phonetic realizations in the Kanuri language. These features and processes which had an important impact on the rules and conventions of the SKO are the following: 1. With regard to morphological typology, Kanuri is an agglutinative language, i.e. most meaningful grammatical units occur as bound morphemes applied to roots through affixation. 2. A general process of consonant weakening is ongoing throughout the language, and is conditioned by morphophonemic, phonemic and phonetic contexts. 3. Apart from normal dialect variation, there also exists the problem of idiolects causing phonetic variation within the target Maiduguri (Yerwa) dialect. The following are examples of sound alternations due to prefixation and suffixation:

DICTIONARY

OF THE KANURI

phonemic

x

LANGUAGE

phonetic

SKO

n s + s + d + k d r + n a [ n z d w d r i n a ] nzoworana kazia+Ki+Ka [kaza:da] kazaawaa

meaning they have asked you having spears

Consonant weakening is characterized by several stages which can be demonstrated through the application of rules capturing common phonological processes. Consonant weakening occurs most frequently in intervocalic position, as represented in the following examples: a) b) c) d) e)

degemination: voicing: fricativization: voicing: deletion:

kaKKé ¿Ta ssKarfn zdBln saKarfn

[kakê] [¿da] [sa"yarfn] [ziwin] [saarfn]

mine this he or she carves they eat they carve

2.3. IDIOLECTAL VARIATION IN THE MAIDUGURI (YERWA) DIALECT. For a significant number of basic lexical items there is considerable idiolectal variation in the target dialect. The SKO, and also this dictionary, propose standardized f o r m s for such items represented in the following selection of examples:

base form

idiolectal variations

SKO

meaning

miisko krfrGe kiilGii lenSKfn

[mdsko, miikko, miiko] [kärye, kärye, k i r r e , k3re] [külwü, küllü, külü:] [leqîn, leyîn, lêfîn, lein]

musko kirge kulwu lengln

hand region gown I go

2.4. SKO CONVENTIONS FOR WRITING INTERVOCALIC g AND k. The underlying phonemes g and k are not realized as g and k in all environments. This can of course be explained by the ongoing process of consonant weakening. The following table shows the major changes which were taken into account in the development of the SKO, and the orthographic representations which were adopted:

DICTIONARY

OF THE KANURI

preceding vowel

SKO spelling

any vowel a

XI

LANGUAGE

following vowel 3

g

a, e, 1, o, u

any vowel o, u

w o, u

a

1 e a, o, u

y

a, e a, 1 e, 1

a e 1

0 (omit)

a e i

examples:

base form

SKO

sd+Kdr+in ri+Ka+da sa+Kar+fn

soworin rlyada saarin

translation they ask they feared they carve

2.5. SKO TREATMENT OF THE VELAR NASAL. The velar nasal consonant [q] occurs in the following phonetic combinations in Kanuri: [qp og, no, nqg, mo, mog, on, go, oog, ok] For practical reasons, it was decided that the phonetic symbol for the velar nasal would not become a grapheme of the SKO, and the digraph ng was instead adopted for use throughout, with a number of accompanying spelling conventions in order to represent faithfully the above clusters containing the velar nasal consonant. A solution had to be adopted which would avoid clumsy combinations such as ngng to represent [oog] and tool. The following conventions were adopted as a compromise solution which avoids ambiguity and also the creation of a new orthographic symbol:

Xll

DICTIONARY OF THE KANURI LANGUAGE

phonetic fo]

lug] [n 0 ] [nqg] [mq] [mqg] ton] [qq] [QOg] Ink]

SKO ng ng nng nng mng mng ngn ngg ngg nk

phonetic [kdodna] [kdqgo] [ldnq^na] [ltfnqgo] [kdmq^na] [kdmqgo] [kdqnamin] [kdqijsna] [kdqagol [brfQkl]

SKO kongana kongo lenngana lenngo komngana komngo kongnamin konggana konggo bankl

meaning I have passed I passed I have slept I slept I have counted I counted I plant I have planted you plant bank

2.6. IRREGULAR PRONUNCIATION AND SPELLING. There are a very few entries for which the orthographic representation is not faithful to the actual pronunciation of the word. Here again this is due to the fact that the developers of the SKO did not want to introduce new orthographic symbols which would hinder the writing, typing, and printing of the language. In the present dictionary, a phonetic representation is included in square brackets immediately following such entries. For example, in most of its occurrences the retroflex r or 1 is predictable, occurring before the high front vowel i. However in certain borrowed words it is not predictable, as in the following entry: reke

[leke] n (H) sugar cane.

Similarly, certain geographical names are not written according to the principals of the SKO due to reasons of standardization of spelling across languages, as in: Maiduguri instead of [malduwuri] Nigeria instead of [naijiriya] 3. THE ORTHOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF GRAMMATICAL SUFFIXES. The various ongoing processes of sound change in Kanuri (e.g. consonant weakening, compensatory lengthening, deletion, etc.) confronted the developers of the SKO with a numbers of problems in need of standardized solutions. Kanuri not only has suffixation at the morphological level, but at the more general syntactic level, is a postposing language with a plethora of derivational and grammatical suffixes or postpositions applied to word-, phrase- and clause-final position.

DICTIONARY OF THE KANURI LANGUAGE

xni

3.1. DISTINGUISHING PHONOLOGICALLY SIMILAR SUFFIXES. The following - admittedly extreme - example illustrates the composition of a construction with several grammatical suffixes: kaz^a spear + K â (all preceding tones lowered) plural marker + Ka associative postposition + Ka conditional marker'if The phonetic realization of this extreme case sounds something like: [kaza:da] 'if there are spears'. Both the student of Kanuri and the speaker of Kanuri would find it difficult to recognize the meaningful units of this construction in any written form. The phonetic transcription would not provide an adequate solution for the representation of the many phonetically similar morphemes involved here. In the SKO and the present dictionary, a rather arbitrary but morpholigically faithful solution was adopted, as shown in the following examples:

category

a) plural

b)

c) d) e)

SKO

+wa fatowa beliwa talamwa hawarwa associative +(C)a after vowels: fatoa bella bellwaa after consonants: talamma hawarra hawarwaa direct object +ga wuga sandlga +ga conditional ishlnga walwonoga' conjunction -a ... -a kari-a ngam- a f s r - a fe-a

translation houses knives tongues, languages news, stories having a house having a knife having knives having a tongue containing news (sing.) containing news (plur.) me them if she or he comes if it becomes a dog and a cat a horse and a cow

DICTIONARY

OF THE KANURI

LANGUAGE

XIV

3.2. THE SUBJECT MARKER +ye. Though the subject or agent marker +ye may be phonetically realized in different ways, it is consistently written as +ye here and in the SKO. phonetic SKO translation [Musaye] Ada Musaye cido. That was done by Musa. [Adambe] Ada Adamye cido. That was done by Adam. 3.3. THE GENITIVE MARKER +be. The consonant b of the genitive marker +be is often assimilated to the preceding consonant, changed to y, or even deleted. However, for the sake of consistency it is always represented here and in the SKO as +be, as shown here where the SKO actually disagrees with the phonetic realization: phonetic [adambe] [musaye, musae]

SKO translation Ada fato Adambe. This is Adam's house, Ada fato Musabe. This is Musa's house.

4. TONE MARKING. Though tone markings are not included as part of the SKO, as mentioned earlier, they have been included here in order to: 1) facilitate the use of the dictionary by the non-Kanuri user, and 2) avoid ambiguities which may result from entries occurring in isolation and thus outside of a disambiguating context. karf ktfri llnami lenSmi l£n3mi len3mi

hill, dune dog you did not touch you did not go you just touched you just went

Low tone syllables are the most frequent of the language and are unmarked in the present dictionary. High, falling and rising tones are indicated according to the following diacritic symbols which occur over the vowels: high: low: falling: rising:

U unmarked