The Linguistic Situation in East Africa

TN considering the linguistic situation of East Africa the first outstanding impression is that of a vast multiplicity of languages which is not met with in any other part of the continent. For instance travelling inland from Tanga for about a hundred miles, the areas of the following languages are entered or crossed: Swahili, Digo, Bondei, Ruvu, Zigula, Shambala, Mbugu, Pare (also called Chasu), and also various linguistic enclaves, viz. Taita, Kamba, Kwafi, Ndorobo, and Masai. For such a small district this is a somewhat bewildering richness, even when allowance is made for the fact that most of these languages are Bantu, and some of them, as for example Ruvu and Zigula, or Shambala and Bondei, are closely related. In addition several languages, such as Jagga on the Kilimanjaro, are split up into a number of widely divergent dialects. Although the linguistic divisions are not in all parts of East Africa as marked as they are in the district between the coast and Kilimanjaro, yet there are other districts, where for the periods when on 'safari', almost every day a new language is encountered, as for example on the way to Lake Nyassa. In a survey like this it cannot therefore be our object to enumerate all the languages of East Africa, even in the case of those which possess the beginnings of a literature. There are, however, in East Africa also large and powerful tribes which to some degree form linguistic units. This is particularly true of the region between the Lakes. In this connexion must first be mentioned the people living between lakes Victoria Nyanza, Kivu, and Tanganyika on the highlands of Ruanda, Urundi, and Uha, numbering in all about five million. Three different states have come into existence here, which politically have no relation whatever with each other; they all are dominated by the Tussi, also called Hima, but are politically completely independent of each other. In spite of this political division, however, the language has remained uniform, with very small local differentiations which can hardly be described as