Life history 4 Documenting Isimjeeg Datooga

A male speaker from Laghangareri asks a female elder from Dugwamuhosht about her personal life history, the migration history of the Asimjeeg Datooga, and what traditional lifestyles were like in the past. Recorded with a Panasonic HC-X920K camcorder and Rode NTG-2 shotgun microphone. Isimjeeg (endonym Asimjeeg) is an undocumented language variety of the Southern Nilotic family, spoken in North-Central Tanzania. Fewer than 5,000 people continue to speak Isimjeeg and its future is threatened by the loss of traditional grazing land and increased use of Kiswahili and Iraqw. The goals of this project include the development of an annotated audiovisual corpus consisting of natural speech data and elicited linguistic forms, a collection of vocal musical performances and commentary, an Isimjeeg-Kiswahili-English dictionary, and a sketch grammar that covers a variety of linguistic aspects and incorporates socio-cultural information about speakers and communities involved in the project. A resident of the Dugwamuhosht community. She is a respected elder in the area. A resident of the Mang'ola community. Yohani is in his late 30s and is well respected as a successful farmer. Yohani helped us to connect with speakers in Dugwamuhosht, Matala, and Law. He has lived in Mang'ola, Dongobesh, and elsewhere. Richard is the primary researcher of the IGS0229 grant and did most of the recordings.