Documenting the Dowe language
| Language | Dowe (ISO639-3:doe), Chidowe (ISO639-3:doe) |
| Depositor | Karsten Legère |
| Affiliation | Institute of African Studies, University of Vienna |
| Location | Tanzania |
| Collection ID | 0269 |
| Grant ID | SG0213 |
| Funding Body | ELDP |
| Collection Status | Collection online |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/7cfda163-ab96-4fa5-ab0c-027af8127fdd |
Summary of the collection
The collection includes material from fieldwork among Dowe people of Msata and Miono Ward (Bagamoyo District, Coast Region, United Republic of Tanzania) conducted in 2012-2013. Dowe is a small Bantu language spoken in the hinterland of the Indian Ocean.
Group represented
Dowe.
Language information
The Dowe language (autonym Chidowe, xenonym Kidoe, Doe) is a small Bantu language of Guthrie’s G zone. It is spoken in the hinterland of the Indian Ocean coast in some villages of Msata and Miono Ward (Bagamoyo District, Coast Region) of the United Republic of Tanzania. “Ethnologue” claims that there were 24,000 Dowe speakers in 1987. The Language Atlas of Tanzania (MLT=Mradi wa Lugha za Tanzania. 2009. Atlasi ya Lugha za Tanzania. Dar es Salaam: Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam) p. 3 lists 7,944 Dowe speakers. The Dowe language is vibrant in villages like Mkoko, Gongo, Mtupeni, partly Matipwili and more, but under heavy Swahili influence for the meanwhile multi-ethnic and multi-lingual composition of originally typical Dowe villages along the tarmac road Msata – Bagamoyo (under construction), where still a number of excellent Dowe speakers can be found.
Collection contents
The audio and video data deposited here are samples of rich oral traditions that were traced all over the Dowe area.
Collection history
A wide range of speech events were recorded by the depositor as well as committed assistants such as Mr. Peter Mkwan’hembo in close cooperation with Mrisho Mkawa of Mkoko village. Mzee Mkawa transcribed the recently deposited Dowe recordings using an orthography which for practical reasons is close to the Swahili orthography. He was also responsible for a Swahili translation of the texts thus facilitating the access to the collection for those who are competent in the Tanzanian national language. A map drawn by Ms. Monika Feinen who is a professional cartographer illustrates the distribution of the Dowe language. In addition, photos of plants collected among Dowe people shed light on traditional knowledge that is further documented in the included plant use descriptions.
Other information
The languages of the hinterland (Dowe included) have been under the permanent influence of Swahili for many years. As a result, these languages which are closely related to Swahili (all classified by Guthrie as belonging to G zone) have been shaped by structural and lexical elements that originate from Swahili. In addition, language loss has always been observed. (see Legère, 1983). Similar results were also found by Ström (2009) for Ndengeleko and Brenzinger (1992)for Dzalamo. Intergenerational language transfer is rather insignificant among Dowe people (confirmed recently), thus threatening the future of Dowe language. The language is not used in formal domains, where the national and co-official Swahili language is dominant. No publication at all is available in Dowe. There is no orthography; accordingly, people are literate in Swahili, if at all. There was only rudimentary linguistic research end 1969 which resulted in a 1500 wordlist
downloadable from the web.
Acknowledgement and citation
This collection is the result of generous ELDP funding and committed fieldwork as well as text editing in close cooperation with Dowe language experts.
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Legère, Karsten. 2014. Documenting the Dowe language. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0000-A91D-4. Accessed on [insert date here].
