Mursi (munen) language materials

Language	Mursi
Depositor	Firew Girma Worku, Barkede Kulumedere
Affiliation	James Cook University
Location	Ethiopia
Collection ID	0755
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/3361a489-3f8f-43dd-b258-1c3127bfd634

 

Summary of the collection

The deposit is a result of a description and documentation of the Mursi language and culture, funded by James Cook University between 2016-2020. The project was a collaborative effort of a linguist and a group of native speakers of Mursi (language consultants) who were involved in the collection, transcription and translation of the data. The deposited data includes a range of genres and topics and contains valuable information about the Mursi language and culture. Almost all the materials deposited here have been recorded on audio, as well as video. The information about the sessions, topics and text codes, are available in English.

 

Group represented

The Mursi (autodenomination Mùn plural or Mùnì singular) are a small group of people numbering around 7,500 (Population Census Commission, 2007), who live in the Lower Omo Valley, Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Regional State (SNNPRS), Ethiopia. The Mursi are called by alternative names: Murzi, Murzu, Murutu, Meritu, Dama, and Mùnɛ̀n. The Amhara (the so-called highlanders or kúchúmbáj by the Mursi) call them Mursi and their language mursiɲa. Their southern neighbors (the Nyangatom) call them ɲikalabɔŋ and their nearest neighbours the Bodi (Me’en) call them Dama. However, the Mursi call themselves mùn and their language mùnɛ̀n. They speak Mursi (Ethnologue code ISO 639-3 muz), a Surmic language which belongs to the Nilo-Saharan language family. Their territory has a size of 2,000km2—and is located in the South Omo Zone of Southwestern Ethiopia. They live in four villages, namely: Mákkí (also known by the Mursi as Mákó), Móyzó, Bóngózó, and Rómós . These villages lie between two rivers, namely: the Omo (known to the Mursi Wárr) to the west and the Mago to the east—and are surrounded by two National Parks named after these two rivers (Omo and Mago).
There is not much known about their present day’s territory. Yet they still claim that their territory was once vast and used to start at Mákkí (the Mursi’s main village, until now) and stretched right across the Maji plateau in the west to the Bako range in the east. However, their territorial claim is a historical narration of migration that comes from the Mursi’s ancestors and is apparently a story to be told for generations to come, a story very similar to ‘Crossing the Red Sea’ or ‘the Exodus’, led by Moses. At the center of all their stories, there was a strong man called, Káwúlókòrò, who enabled them (the Mursi people) to cross the Omo River and settle at their present area. We will also find this story later in this deposit; see muz001.pdf. The Mursi became part of the Ethiopian state in the late 19th century following King Menelik II’s control of the southern part of the country as his major ambition to establish the modern-day Ethiopia’s geopolitical shape (Turton 1988). The late 19th century’s territorial expansion led by Menelik II to the Southwestern part of the country was not only for the sake of keeping the geographical and political shape of modern-day Ethiopia, but it was also of economic importance. By the late 1890s, those who were at the top in the Menelik II’s Imperial hierarchy already had engaged in collecting tribute and tax from the Mursi and the surrounding areas. At the time, collecting tax and tribute from Mursi as well as from other such societies was not an easy and a smooth process as we may think of today; the process usually involved cattle raids by the highlanders, whom the Mursi call ‘Kúchúmbáj’. In fact, in regard to the scenario of that time, Smith (1900: 609) wrote, ‘The Mursu, whom we found on the banks of the Omo, had escaped the raids of the Abyssinians, and were in a most flourishing condition.’ Around the same period, Cavendish (1898: 385) wrote, “After crossing the river, I explored up the right bank, which is densely populated by a strong, rich tribe called the ‘Murutu’”. Turton (1988: 261) who wrote much on the organization of the Mursi society, including their socioeconomic, and traditional political structure, has also written on the Mursi’s population movement from 1890s to 1980s. According to Turton, the Mursi themselves describe the migrations they made during this period as ‘Looking for a cool place’. Today’s Mursi people are the outcome of three separate population movements that started around two centuries ago and continued until the late 1970s. Their first migration was around the mid-nineteenth century, as they say from the Ethiopian southwestern lowlands (around the border and juncture of Ethiopia-Sudan) to possibly the area now called southern Mursiland or Kúrúm. According to literature and Mursi traditional history and stories, they moved from the Dirka mountain range to the Omo and the River Mago. This first migration movement had been led by their ancestors and is known to have taken place between 100 and 200 years ago. Of all their three migrations, this one has no written evidence to substantiate it, but is believed to have lasted up to the 1920s. This was a historic moment for the ancestors as well as for the current generation of Mursi as it was a time when they created a legendary story very similar to the story of the parting of the Red Sea by Moses. At the time, there was a strong man called Káwúlókòrò who took part in this movement across the Omo. He is still considered by most as a legend who enabled the Mursi to cross the Omo River (see muz001.pdf). According to Turton (1973), the crossing of the Omo and the new settlement in the vicinity of Kúrúm is regarded by the Mursi as not only the start of a new life but also as a new birth of their current political identity. The major historical reason for the first Mursi population movement was ecological change. Turton (citing Karl Butzer 1971) wrote that after 1896, certain ecological changes had taken place in the Lower Omo basin (mainly due to reduced rainfall) which resulted in a reduced water discharge from the Omo River to Lake Turkana. This ecological change is still regarded as a major reason for their first territorial expansion towards the Eastern bank of the Omo River. By the late 1890 the Mursi were living on the east side of the Omo River. The second movement took place in the early 1900s (around 1920s and 1930s). During this period, the Mursi were able to move northwards and expand their territory up to today’s northern border River Mara.
Once more, the Mursi having the intention of expand into the plains of the Lower Omo, started their third and last migration movement at the end of the 1970s. Interestingly, the last movement took them into the arable areas of the Lower Omo but brought them not only into regular contact with their agriculturalist neighbours Aari, but also to the place where once their long-time rivals used to live, i.e. the Bodi (in the upper Mago Valley border). The main reasons for these three movements are ecological. The former areas abandoned by the Mursi people were uninhabitable, mountainous, rocky valleys; thus were unsuitable for their major economic subsistence, i.e. cattle herding. Or as the Mursi say ɓá lálíní ‘cool place’ is a place where grazing ground and adequate water is available for their cattle.

 

Language information

Mursi, also called mùnɛ̀n (ISO code 639-3: muz) is an endangered language of Southwestern Ethiopia, spoken by approximately 7500 native speakers. In terms of linguistic affiliation, Mursi is one of the Southeast Surmic group language within the Eastern Sudanic Branch of the Nilo-Saharan family. From the Surmic languages, Mursi, Chai, Tirma, Bodi, Me’en, and Kwegu (aslo Koegu)/ Muguji are spoken in Ethiopia. The other languages, Didinga, Narim, Tenet, Murle, and Baale are spoken in Sudan. Despite the fact that they have a higher level of understanding of the languages spoken by their neighbors, the Mursi can be described as a monolingual society. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the speakers of Mursi and Me’en (Chai) languages. Both languages can form a dialectal continuum of the Southeastern Surmic group. When we consider the nature of the Mursi speaker language skills, it is very rare to find bilingual or multilingual speakers who are able to communicate or effectively use different languages spoken in the neighboring areas. This means, the Mursi people can be regarded as ‘monolinguals’ despite the fact that they live in close contact with its neighbours who are alike linguistically as well as culturally. The 2007 National census of Ethiopia reported that the total population of the Mursi ethnic group is approximately 7,500, of which more than 98% were identified as monolinguals in Mursi whereas the rest 2% were bilinguals/multilinguals they speak their native language and at least one more language of their neighbours. This is due to the fact that the Mursi see themselves as well as their languages as very distinct—even from their close neighbours who speak related languages such as Chai and Tirma. Only a few younger people have some competence in Amharic. Until recently, young Mursi who attend formal schooling in public schools have constituted less than 1% of the total population Literacy rate in second language.

 

Special characteristics

What makes this collection unique is that it contains important historical and cultural information which appear to be unfamiliar to younger speakers but are known only by older speakers of Mursi. Although their specific literary traditions are still unknown, at present, this community appears to be in a situation of cultural shift. For example, there appear to be numerous oral stories describing how the Mursi crossed river Omo and settle at their present territory. One of such oral stories which appears to be very similar to ‘Crossing the Red Sea’ or ‘the Exodus’ led by Moses is in this deposition.
There also other oral stories which appear to reflect a historical contact with other speech communities who live in the region as well as in the juncture of Ethio-Sudan (Worku, 2021). According to the stories recoded during my previous fieldworks in the speech community, Mursi and other languages were previously spoken in close proximity in an area that stretched right across the Maji plateau in the west to the Bako range in the east, where the other are still spoken. As the Mursi elders say, the Mursi then migrated from the Ethiopian southwestern lowlands (around the border and juncture of Ethiopia-Sudan) to possibly the area now called southern Mursiland or Kurum (Worku 2021, Turton 1988). So today’s Mursi people are the outcome of three separate migrations (movements) that started around two centuries ago and continued until the late 1970s. According to Turton, the Mursi themselves describe the migrations they made during this period as ‘Looking for a cool place’. Therefore the deposited materials were provided by such oral stories and traditions, and will add original contribution to our knowledge of the Mursi people.

 

Collection contents

This collection contains audio recordings reflecting the natural language usage and representing a range of genres: (i) historical narratives, (ii) descriptions of important cultural practices, such as naming and age set/grade, and (iii) oral stories and fairy tales. In the current version, the deposited audio and video materials contain 36 minutes of recorded language use. Of the deposited data, 16 minutes have time-aligned transcription in Mursi, translation in English, and morpheme-by-morpheme glosses in both languages.

 

Collection history

The project from which this deposit originated was financed by a James Cook University Graduate Research School Scholarship, awarded to Firew Girma Worku for the period from July 2016 to February 2020.
The Mursi language description and documentation project begun in 2016. The data for this project was collected through an immersion fieldwork approach following Firew’s two field trips to the villages of the Mursi community in 2016 and in 2019. Firew’s first field trip duration in the Mursi community villages was from November 2016 to October 2017 (for about 11 months), and the second was from October 2018 to January 2019 (three months). The data collected during Firew’s two field trips include mainly an extensive corpus of texts of different genres, from different speakers, and from different locations. Following these field trips, he has been able to record more than 40 hours of audio recordings of stories from different genres (history, stories, socio-cultural, and day-to-day life activities, songs, and other). Of this, a four hour audio recording has been transcribed and annotated (yielding over 1000 pages). A four-hour video footage is also available (because participant observation is very important). In addition, the corpus includes hundreds of pages of handwritten field notes, 26 stories (texts), 2 songs, 3 bible chapters, and more. Of the 26 texts, four are attached as appendices. The bulk of Firew’s time in the fieldwork was spent on recording, transcribing, and interlinearizing these texts. Almost all the materials used in this deposit as we the Mursi reference grammar book (Worku 2021) were collected with 16 native speakers of Mursi (language consultants), of whom 14 were males and two were females. All the data were recorded in three particular places: Romos (one of the Mursi villages about 80km from Jinka Town, Ethiopia), Salamago (Hana Mursi; the main Woreda for Mursi, Bodi and Dime), and Jinka Town (specifically at South Omo Research (SORC) and surrounding areas).
The materials deposited here are parts of the collected corpus for the Mursi language description and documentation project. These materials were made available in the Endangered Languages Archive for the first time in 2023.

 

Other Information

As Amharic becomes more and more entrenched as the official language of education, trade, and communication between different language communities, it is clear that the use of Mursi is declining. Several traditional speech registers, genres and naming practices are already no longer practiced in the Mursi community, and may soon be forgotten if steps are not taken to document, archive and promote these literary traditions. More than ever, Mursi speakers, particularly elders and a small number of young linguists of the community who have been working to claim their linguistic heritage are now expressing their fear, i.e. what they consider to be the most urgent threats to their language, such as dominancy of Amharic and loss of indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge.
The Mursi language has not been extensively described and documented beyond a sketch grammar and a dictionary until recently. Apart from a few studies on the language, nobody had approached the task of writing a comprehensive description of Mursi grammar until 2020 (until my PhD thesis). My previous research at James Cook University resulted in the first reference grammar of the Mursi language (A Grammar of Mursi: A Nilo-Saharan Language of Ethiopia. Brill: Leiden. 2021), which provided the essential aspects of phonology, morphology and syntax. This reference grammar book is a published version of my PhD thesis. It is a pioneering study which aimed at describing, documenting, and maintaining the speech community’s largely undocumented linguistic heritage. In addition, the grammar provides readers with an in-depth, comprehensive analysis of the whole grammar of one of the most endangered languages spoken in Africa, so much so it helps linguists, anthropologists, ethnographers, educators, and learners to build upon previous attempts at producing and archiving both digital and print materials on the language. As it constituted the largest collection of Mursi data so far (including Mursi oral texts and epistemologies), thus far, the publication of this grammar is making a great deal of contributions, such as in boosting the confidence of the Mursi community on their heritage as well as in adding original knowledge to our understanding of the Mursi language, culture and history. Also, it has the potential to inspire a small number of community linguists to continue writing, documenting, archiving, and maintaining their language.
In addition to the purely linguistic interests, I strongly believe that my study on this language will contribute to an important repository of traditional knowledge (as it contains more than 40 pages of narratives, mostly oral texts that are based on spontaneous, naturally-occurring discourse and elicited material collected), encourage development and use of the language in schools and local media, serve as a potential bridge for more pedagogical and applied research in the future. For the linguistic community at large and for African scholarship in particular, such study on endangered languages are essential input for historical–typological comparison and serve as empirical material for theoretical advances in studies in language and cognition.

 

References

Cavendish, H.S. 1898. Through Somaliland and around the South of Lake Rudolf, Geographical Journal 11: 372–396
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Population Census Commission. 2007. Summary and Statistical Report of the 2007 Population and Housing Census. Addis Ababa. Available at: https://www.scribd.com/doc/28289334/Summary-and-Statistical-Report-of-the-2007 (Accessed: 30 January 2018)
Smith, A.D. 1900. An expedition between Lake Rudolf and the Nile. Geographical Journey, 16: 600–625.
Turton, David. 1973. ‘The social organization of the Mursi’. Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of Oxford.
Turton, David. 1988. ‘Looking for a cool place: the Mursi, 1890s–1990s’. Ecology of Survival. Lester Crook Academic Publishing, London, pp. 261–282.
Worku, Firew Girma. 2021. A Grammar of Mursi: A Nilo-Saharan Language of Ethiopia. Brill: Leiden and Boston
Worku, Firew Girma. 2020. A grammar of Mursi, a Nilo-Saharan language. PhD Thesis, James Cook University. https://doi.org/10.25903/w5c2%2Dsa10

 

Acknowledgement and citation

Users of any part of this collection should acknowledge Firew Girma Worku as the principal researcher and James Cook University Graduate Research School as the funder of this project. Users of parts of the corpus should acknowledge by name of the individuals appearing in the recordings whose words and/or images are used. The names of language consultants is available in the metadata/texts.

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:

Worku, Firew Girma. 2023. Mursi (Munen) language materials. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/2881ed3a-ad7a-4991-ae12-e3787ba34158. Accessed on [insert date here].