Language vitality and cultural loss in Law Documenting Isimjeeg Datooga

A male elder speaker from Law discusses his history and changes in the Law region. Recorded with Rode NTG-2 shotgun microphone and Panasonic HC-X920K camcorder. Bundle includes high resolution video file (.MTS), low resolution video file (.MP4), ELAN file (.EAF), Praat TextGrid file (.TextGrid), and tab-delimited text file (.TXT). 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 Law community. Richard is the primary researcher of the IGS0229 grant and did most of the recordings.