rgriscom/Omaiyo-Language-Resources

This repository contains text data of the unclassified language known as Omaiyo, spoken in northern Tanzania. # Omaiyo Language Resources Wiki This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. ![This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License][1] Please visit the project on OSF for all related data files. Machine-readable text files for the project are hosted here on GitHub. ## 1. Introduction This project is a collection of data from a variety of different sources, all related to the unclassified language of northern Tanzania known as Omaiyo or Omaio. As of the last data collection period in 2018, this language was moribund and spoken by only three semi-speakers: * **Nairuko Siruwananga:** Female. The speaker who remembers the most, sister of Leperia. Hard of hearing. * **Leperia Mbogo:** Male, ~75 years old. Knows a few words, brother of Nairuko. Very frail and unable to see well. * **Langaseki Olepaw:** Male, ~80 years old. Learned some Omaiyo from the other speakers but was not raised as an Omaiyo speaker. *A photo of the three remaining speakers of Omaiyo. From right to left: the local chairman, Langaseki Olepaw, Leperia Mbogo, Daudi Peterson, Nairuko Siruwananga, and Alina Redka.* Others exist who self-identify as members of the Omaiyo community but do not speak the language at all, and it is remotely possible that there are other speakers who have not been contacted. The three speakers who have been recorded have not actively spoken the language since childhood and thus exhibit the effects of language attrition. According to interviews with the speakers, the Omaiyo were at one point residing in the Serengeti before being expelled in the 1950's together with the Maasai. They now live near the border between the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the Maswa Game Reserve, near the village of Makao. ## 2. Description of the data sources Currently, there are five sources for data, collected over a period of six years. All data was collected in or around Makao village. Most of the tra …