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Segeju and Daisũ: A Case Study of Evidence from Oral Tradition and Comparative Linguistics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Derek Nurse
Derek Nurse*
Affiliation:
University of Dar es Salaam
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Extract

The history of “the” Segeju has been the subject of lengthy published debate. The discussion has been based almost entirely on interpretation of oral traditions as recounted by Segeju informants to various scholars. A newcomer with a linguistic bias is struck by certain aspects of much of this debate:

a] the linguistic implausibility apparently involved. Baker, for example, recording fairly literally what he was told, started the history of “the” Segeju in the Middle East: this would presumably involve a community speaking Arabic or Persian. There follows reference to “segeju” travels and sojourns in mainland northeast Africa: linguistic affiliation unknown. This period terminates with their arrival at Shungwaya, in southern Somalia: linguistic affiliation unstated. Later “they” are found on the Upper Tana River: Kamba is mentioned. Finally “they” settle in their present location on the northern Tanzanian coast, where today the language affiliations of people referring to themselves as “Segeju” are various (see below).

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 9 , 1982 , pp. 175 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1982

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Jim Allen and Tom Spear for reading and commenting extensively on an earlier version of this paper.

References

NOTES

1. E.g. see Hollis, A.C., “Notes on the History of the Vumba,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 30(1900), 275–98Google Scholar; Baker, E.C., “Notes on the History of the Wasegeju,” Tanganyika Notes and Records, 27(1949), 16–41Google Scholar; Spear, Thomas, The Kaya Complex (Nairobi, 1978)Google Scholar; Ridhiwani, P., Kale ya Wasegeju (Dar es Salaam, forthcoming).Google Scholar

2. Spear's work is an exception to the following generalizations.

3. It is not proposed to relate all the various details of Segeju oral tradition here. They can be read in Baker or Spear.

4. Personal communication from Mzee P. Ridhiwani of Tanga, presently working in the Institute of Swahili Research, University of Dar es Salaam, himself a Swahili-speaking Segeju, and versed in matters of Segeju tradition.

5. Spear, , Kaya Complex, 4.Google Scholar

6. E.g. Guthrie, M., Comparative Bantu (4 vols.: Farnborough, 1971), 2:46.Google Scholar Thagicu languages are also known as Central Kenya Bantu languages (Guthrie's E50)-Kamba, Meru, Embu, Gikuyu: also Sonjo.

7. It is a well-known phenomenon that the feelings of two communities about each other may color their view as to the degree of “mutual intelligibility.”

8. Spear, , Kaya Complex, 4.Google Scholar

9. Newman, P., “Linguistic Relationship, Language Shifting, and Historical Inference,” Afrika und Ubersee, 53 (1969/1970), 218.Google Scholar

10. Wolff, E., “Sprachkontakt und Ethnizität, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 2(1980), 43.Google Scholar

11. Actually, a misnomer in linguistic terms, as they are ten if Segeju is included.

12. Any subdivision such as this is partly artificial. Duruma especially shows some SMK features.

13. Their exact numbers are unknown; they probably number a few thousand.

14. Also, for example, Duruma tumbi “egg.”

15. The former overlaps with the aspectual notion of “perfect.”

16. Baumann, O., Usambara und seine Nachbargebiete (Berlin, 1891).Google Scholar

17. Seuta comprises Shambala, Bondei, Zigula, and Ngulu.

18. For an outline of Seuta sound shifts see Nurse, Derek, Classification of the Chaga Dialects (Hamburg, 1979), 413–14.Google Scholar

19. For those unfamiliar with Thagicu verbal systems see Bennett, P.R., “A Comparative Study of Four Thagicũ Verbal Systems,” (Ph.D., University of London, 1969).Google Scholar

20. /-raa-/ is replaced by /-naa-/ in Kamba today.

21. Gikuyu tiga: Daisũ tia. G-loss in Daisũ.

22. k > g/n_ is regular in Kamba and Daisũ.

23. For an overview of the Shambala verb see Nurse, , “Description of Sample Bantu Languages of Tanzania,” African Languages/Langues Africaines, 5(1979), 96–100.Google Scholar

24. “Genetically” is used advisedly, in view of the distortions Daisũ has undergone in the last few centuries. A rough lexicostatistical count shows a relatively low relationship with other Thagicu languages today. See Nurse, D. and Philippson, G., “The Bantu Languages of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda: a Lexicostatistical Survey” in Polomé, E., ed., Language in Tanzania (London, 1980), 65.Google Scholar

25. Spear, , Kaya Complex, 36.Google Scholar

26. Bennett, P.R., “Dahl's Law in Thagicũ,” African Language Studies, 8(1967), 127–59.Google Scholar

27. Muriuki, Godfrey, A History of the Kikuyu People, 1500-1900 (Nairobi, 1971), 47ff.Google Scholar

28. Ibid.

29. I am indebted to Dr. Muthiani of Kenyatta University College, Nairobi, for this and other information.

30. Spear, , Kaya Complex, 37.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., 36.

32. Ibid.

33. Some Meru dialects also show g-loss but r-retention.

34. Assumes nz > s in Daisu took place later under Seuta influence.

35. Some commentators have implied that Segeju cattle-keeping came south from Shungwaya, e.g. Allen, J., “The Peopling of of the Lamu-South Benaadir Hinterland in the Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries” (Nairobi, 1980)Google Scholar, [Staff Seminar Paper No. 12, History Dept., University of Nairobi], 18. This does not fit with the fact that most Segeju and MK cattle and stock lexis that is not inherited is Thagicu in origin.

36. Mzee Ridhiwani (personal communication) has enquired widely among the Segeju about this, and elicited that there are “Segeju” (=Daisũ?) traditions relating to residence in Upare and Ugweno, even on Kilimanjaro.

37. Thomas Spear has pointed out to me that this contradicts evidence from other sources that indicates that the MK adopted stock and cattle in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

38. There is at least one place name in Upare of Thagicu origin. In North Pare the name of a now dried-up lake involves the word iria “lake.” This is the pan-Thagicu word for “lake, pool:” it is difficult to assign it to the first or second Thagicu set in Pare/Gweno.

39. Segeju traditions imply that they came down the Athi-Galana-Sabaki, rather than the Tana, River.

40. Muriuki, History of the Kikuyu; Kimambo, I.N., A Political History of the Pare of Tanzania, ca. 1500-1900 (Nairobi, 1969)Google Scholar; Spear, T.T., Kenya's Past (London, 1981).Google Scholar

41. Spear, , Kaya Complex, 148–50.Google Scholar

42. Cf. Spear, ibid., 36.

43. Ibid., 23, 35; Ridhiwani (personal communication); Morton, R.F., “The Shungwaya Myth of Miji Kenda Origins: a Problem of Nineteenth Century Kenya,” IJAHS, 5(1973), 397–423Google Scholar; Chittick, H.N., “The Book of the Zenj and the Miji Kenda,” IJAHS, 9(1976), 68–73.Google Scholar

44. Also Somali, Orma, and Boni.

45. For instance, at Malindi, devastated by the Orma in the sixteenth century.

46. It is not appropriate to go into great detail of the distribution of Cushitic loan vocabulary here. From the MK point of view, there are Cushitic loan-sets of a reasonable size shared with Thagicu, Taita, the line of Bantu communities between the coast and the remaining Southern Cushitic communities of western Tanzania. A small set only distinguishes MK and Sabaki. There is a set intermediate in size restricted to the MK alone.

47. For Cushitic in Thagicu (Central Kenya Bantu) see Ehret, C., Ethiopians and East Africans (Nairobi, 1974), 85Google Scholar: in Seuta, ibid., 69: in Taita, see Ehret, and Nurse, D., “The Taita Cushites,” Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 3(1981)Google Scholar: in Swahili, see Ehret, , The Historical Reconstruction of Southern Cushitic Phonology and Vocabulary (Berlin, 1980)Google Scholar, and D. Nurse, “A Hypothesis Concerning the Origin of Swahili,” MS. Institute of Swahili Research: in Pokomo, D. Nurse, “History From Linguistics: the Case of the Tana River,” MS. There is evidence, published and unpublished, for contacts with Cushitic-speakers on Kilimanjaro, western Kenya, western and southwestern Tanzania, the Luguru Mountains, and so on.

48. Segeju is now so assimilated to Digo that little trace remains of these loans.

49. In origin these are Thagicu: see Nurse, “History From Linguistics,” Appendix 7. The point is that outside the Thagicu of central Kenya they are unique to Pokomo and Daisũ: in Pokomo, details of their phonology indicate that they are loans. This suggests contact between Pokomo and Daisũ.

50. The other MK have tsawe, which would be the expected form in Daisũ. Upper Pokomo /c/, orthographic ch, corresponds regularly to MK /ts/. Thus this is likely to be a loan from Upper Pokomo, not MK.

51. Where Standard Swahili has /c, j/, the northern dialects have /t, y/.

52. This is something of a simplification. Some of these items do occur in nearby languages, but in cognate form. Considerations of shape or distribution suggest their loan status in Daisũ.

53. D. Nurse, “A Hypothesis Concerning the Origin of Swahili.”

54. See Spear, , Kaya Complex, 27.Google Scholar

55. Personal communication.

56. Nurse, “History From Linguistics.” See fn. 39.

57. Thomas Spear, personal communication.

58. Kimambo, , Pare of Tanzania, 29.Google Scholar