Childbirth Documenting Isimjeeg Datooga

Two female speakers from Matala discuss aspects of how Asimjeeg Datooga women would give birth in the past. Recorded with Rode NTG-2 shotgun microphone and Panasonic HC-X920K camcorder. Bundle includes high resolution video file (.MTS), and low resolution video file (.MP4), tab-delimited text file (.TXT), and Praat TextGrid file (.TextGrid). 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 Matala community. Richard is the primary researcher of the IGS0229 grant and did most of the recordings.