Swahili’s Currents Spread to a Remote Area: Data from primary schools in Vidunda ward (Central Tanzania)

no abstrac

Ogiek and Akie: How many peoples for how many languages? What is their future?

Ogiek and Akie are the names of two African endangered languages belonging to the Nilo-Saharan, Kalenjin family, originally spoken by scattered groups of hunters and gatherers in a region stretching from southern Kenya to Northern Tanzania. These languages are now in danger due to the loss of their habitat caused by climate change and to an unbalanced diglossia with majority languages (Kikuyu and Swahili in Kenya, Maa and Swahili in Tanzania). Despite their close familiarity and possible common origins, the two languages and speaker communities followed different paths, at least it was so during the last 200 years. This paper aims to investigate how the two different historical, ecological and political contexts impacted the two languages and cultures. On the basis of the fieldwork carried out by the authors in the two areas, the authors aim to point out the extent to which projects of cooperation for the promotion and safeguard of the local languages and cultural intangible heritage have the potential to slow down or reverse the tendency towards languages decline and possible demise

Implications of Extreme Life Span in Clonal Organisms: Millenary Clones in Meadows of the Threatened Seagrass Posidonia oceanica

The maximum size and age that clonal organisms can reach remains poorly known, although we do know that the largest natural clones can extend over hundreds or thousands of metres and potentially live for centuries. We made a review of findings to date, which reveal that the maximum clone age and size estimates reported in the literature are typically limited by the scale of sampling, and may grossly underestimate the maximum age and size of clonal organisms. A case study presented here shows the occurrence of clones of slow-growing marine angiosperm Posidonia oceanica at spatial scales ranging from metres to hundreds of kilometres, using microsatellites on 1544 sampling units from a total of 40 locations across the Mediterranean Sea. This analysis revealed the presence, with a prevalence of 3.5 to 8.9%, of very large clones spreading over one to several (up to 15) kilometres at the different locations. Using estimates from field studies and models of the clonal growth of P. oceanica, we estimated these large clones to be hundreds to thousands of years old, suggesting the evolution of general purpose genotypes with large phenotypic plasticity in this species. These results, obtained combining genetics, demography and model-based calculations, question present knowledge and understanding of the spreading capacity and life span of plant clones. These findings call for further research on these life history traits associated with clonality, considering their possible ecological and evolutionary implications

African Linguistics in Central and Eastern Europe, and in the Nordic Countries

Non peer reviewe

Language endangerment and language documentation in Africa

Non peer reviewe

Trilingual Ng’hwele-Swahili-English and Swahili-Ng’hwele-English wordlist

This trilingual wordlist Ngh’wele-Swahili-English originates from material that was developed by and used in the project “Language Use and Language Teaching in Eastern Africa” during the early seventies

OEAW

An extract which is based on "Free basic course in African languages" of UNISA 200