Appendix

Created 05-08-11
Last edited 14-08-20

- intricacies
"L" And "R" In Kiswahili, APPENDIX
Only for the young ambitious aspiring to acquire solid perspectives for an Academic Dissertation

The next step would of course be to understand the rules that explain which pronunciation of the randa () is used where. Some West Tanzania dialect's pronunciation is closer to r, some some in the East closer to l. This is no strict rule, because the tribes bring in their own mouthing. Those tribes have been weirdly mixed after the historical stage of Bantu dialect formation had set in, creating "pronunciation islands". As far as it depends on general Bantu constraints on sound sequences I am looking at the following explanation sources (in Kiswahili and or Bantu languages a vowel is always between two consonants, and a consonant is always between to vowels):

Bantu do not regard words as consisting of letters. They are seen to consist of syllables. The oral spelling of motokaa (motorcar) amounts to cutting the word in three, saying: "mo - to - kaa".

My family name is hamminga, in 3 Lower Saxon syllables Ham-min-ga. Asked by Kiswahili speakers to spell I give four syllables: "Ha - m - mi - nga". Of course I do not even try to get the stress right in their pronunciation (Lower Saxon: on Ha, East Africa: on mi)

In all syllables starting with , the next letter (in the western alphabetization of Kiswahili) can be only a,e,i or u.

In all words containing a , can only be preceded by a, e, i, m, o, u (m is actually often more like a vowel in Kiswahili). The very few exceptions to this limited lists of precedent letters are English loan words "blanket", "plaster", written like: blanketi, plasta. These are exceptions to alphabetization but neither to pronunciation nor to Kiswahili oral spelling, since they are pronounced belanketi (orally spelled saying "be - la - nke - ti") and pelasta ("pe - la - sta"). Blue has even become alphabetized as bulu (orally spelled "bu - lu - u").

Kiswahili speakers speaking English can say pr but saying pl is just as difficult to them as saying tl is to westerners. Hence plaster could have become either prasta or pelasta, and the word took the latter form.

This explains probrem, Engrish, Of course, this offers no explanation of many other things, for example why grey becomes gley (or, better geli (ge-le-i)), and top enigma: primer becomes playma (better: pelyma ("pe - l - yma"), where the e (Kiswahili e so English "i" as in "bird") is extremely mute and short, and yma is a difficult syllable for Kiswahili speakers. They cannot make "pe - la - ye- ma" because it would cause ye to have the stress clearly getting them off target).

If preceded by n, shifts to the d-corner of the -triangle: nrefu is pronounced (and even written) ndefu, nlimi is pronounced (and even written) ndimi.

The Kiswahili word for gazelle is of impeccable Bantu origin, sometimes alphabetized swala, sometimes swara. It seems the only problem of the alphabetizing natives has been how the English want to see the syllable "a" written. Bantu themselves traditionally had no problems, wisely abstaining from writing altogether. Similarly, I found "full moon" alphabetized as mbaramwezi but also as balamwezi. This clearly shows that these different shades of pronunciation are inessential to Kiswahili and hence should not be reflected in different spellings, not even in the Roman alphabet (the first lettering, the Arab one, will have had its own, no doubt completely different problems, it should be studied and compared with respect to these issues). Roman alphabetization could make satisfactory approximations by using the randa: swaa, baamwezi etc. As it stands now, the Roman alphabetization is defective and confusing whereever Roman "r", "l" and "d" are involved.

Gilasi (glass). To prepare for the thick "l" in "glass", an i (English "e" as in "peep" is formed first)

Pori means "bush", hence porini "in the bush". When porini is pronounced I usually clearly hear polini with thick l. Mosquito net is chandalua in some dictionaries and chandarua in others.

In Engrish loan words in which the English drop the "r" in pronunciation or mouth the typical English degenerate remnant-"r" as in "altogether", Kiswahili speakers drop it altogetha and have alphabetized accordingly. Often in these cases the alphabetisation is - from the phonetical perspective - nothing but an improved version of the English!: "bar" baa, "spare" spea, "picture" picha , "puncture" pancha. Where there is no final unstressed vowel, it is added: "cupboard" becomes kabati.", "board" becomes bodi, and, last but not least, "air letter form" becomes eafomu.

I stop this work here. I am too old for this. Rafiki, fanya kazi!