The Maasai (Maa) Language

   The following links lead to a brief description of the Maa language.  This language is spoken by some 500,000 Maasai, Samburu, Camus in Kenya, and about another 500,000 people in Tanzania.

1. Introduction: The Maa Language vs. Maasai Ethnicity

2. The Nilo-Saharan Language Family (Historical Linguistics)

3. The Sounds of Maa (Phonology)

3.1 Maa Vowels (or, "What do Tongue Root Contrasts Sound Like?")
3.2 The Tones of Maasai (not yet implemented, but if you would like to hear a Niger-Congo tone language, try here)
4.3 Maasai phonology puzzle:  vowel harmony
4. Maa Words (Morphology)
 4.1 Maa morphology puzzle (gender)
5. Maa Sentences (Syntax)

6. Semantic Domains: Color Terms

7. Language Change and Borrowings


for links to information on Linguistics and the University of Oregon.
Selected References for fuller information on the Maa language.
Return to Maasai Language Project

Acknowledgments
*Some of the data cited in this description of Maa (Maasai) come from work pursued together with Leonard Ole-Kotikash, Philip Koitelel, Daniel Nalangu, Sarah Tukuo (IlKeekonyokie Maasai), Kimeli Ole-Naiyomah and Renoi and Morompi Ole-Ronkei (IlWuasinkishu), Keswe Mapena and Jonathan Ololoso (IlPurko), and others.  Additionally, this chapter has been richly informed by work by the work of Robert Allen, Daniel Blades, Sherri Brainard, Mitsuyo Hamaya, Robert Mix, Linette McDaniel, Cynthia Schneider, Kent Rasmussen, Ando Rasolofo.  It also builds crucially on much previously published work; regretably, the work of only a few prior scholars is formally acknowledged in this brief description.  Please do not copy from this description without acknowledgment and permission of Doris L. Payne (links are welcome).

*This work has been partially supported by a research fellowship from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Science Foundation (Grant no. SBR 980-9387) to Doris Payne and the University of Oregon, the support of the Department of African Languages and Linguistics at the University of Nairobi, the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology, and logistical help from many friends and colleagues in Nairobi and in SIL, and by Thomas Payne.

Selected References
Bender, M. Lionel. 1995. Nilo-Saharan. Paper presented at the Sixth Nilo-Saharan Conference, Santa Monica, California.

Brenzinger, Matthias. 1992. Lexical retention in language shift: Yaaku/Mukogodo-Maasai and Elmolo/Elmolo-Samburu. In Matthias Brenzinger (ed.) Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa, 213-254. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Dimmendaal, Gerrit. 1992. Reduction in Kore reconsidered. In Matthias Brenzinger (ed.) Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa, 117-135. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Greenberg, Joseph. 1963. The Languages of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hamaya, Mitsuyo. 1993. Maasai Auxiliaries and Infinitival Constructions. University of Oregon Masters Thesis.

Heine, Bernd. 1981. Lorkoti Dorobo, a Maasai dialect. In I. Hofmann (ed.), Festschrift zum 60 Geburtstag von P. Anton Vorbichleri, 31-46. (Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und Agyptologie der Universität Wien 14.) Wien: Beiträge zur Afrikanistik.

Heine, Bernd and Matthias Brenzinger. 1988. Notes on the mukogodo dialect of Maasai (Kenya). Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 14.97-131.

Heine, Bernd and Ulrike Claudi.  1986.  On the Rise of Grammatical Categories:  Some Examples from Maa.  Berlin:  Dietrich Reimer Verlag.

Levergood, Barbara. 1987. Topics in Arusa Phonology and Morphology. University of Texas at Austin Ph.D. dissertatin.

Mol, Fr. Frans. 1972. Maa: A Dictionary of the Maasai Language and Folklore, English-Maasai. Nairobi: Marketing and Publishing Ltd.

Mol, Fr. Frans.  1996.  Maasai Language and Culture Dictionary.  Lemek, Kenya:  Maasai Centre Lemek.

Payne, Doris.  1997.  The Maasai External Possessor construction.  Essays on Language Function and Language Type, ed. by Joan Bybee, John Haiman and Sandra Thompson, 395-422.  Amsterdam:  John Benjamins

Payne, Doris. 1998.  Maasai gender in typological perspective.  Studies in African Linguistics 27.159-175.

Payne, Doris, Mitsuyo Hamaya and Peter Jacobs.  1994.  Active, passive, and inverse in Maasai.  Voice and Inversion, ed. by T. Givón, 283-315.  Amsterdam:  John Benjamins.

Tucker, A. N. and J. tompo Ole Mpaayei. 1955. A Maasai Grammar with Vocabulary. London: Longmans, Green and Company.

Vossen, Rainer. 1988. Towards a Comparative Study of the Maa Dialects of Kenya and Tanzania. (Nilo-Saharan 2.) Hamburg: Helmut Buske.

Wallace, B. F.  1981.  The morphophonemics of the Maasai verb.  Nilo-Saharan:  Proceedings of the First Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, Leiden, September 8-10, 1980.  Ed. by Thilo Schedeberg and M. Lionel Bender, 75-88.  Dordrecht:  Foris.

Winter, J. C. 1979. Language shift among the Aasáx, a hunter-gratherer tribe in Tanzania. Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 1:175-204.

This page written by Doris L. Payne.
Last updated February 3, 2003