Lingthusiasm Episode 28: How languages influence each other - Interview with Hannah Gibson on Swahili, Rangi, and Bantu languages
The Rift Valley area of central and northern Tanzania is the only area where languages from all four African language families are found (Bantu, Cushitic, Nilotic, and Khoisan). Languages in this area have been in contact with each other for a long time, especially in the minds of bi- and multilingual speakers, so it’s a really interesting place to learn more about why and how languages influence each other.
In this episode, your host Lauren Gawne interviews Dr. Hannah Gibson, a Lecturer in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex, about her work on how word order differences between Rangi and Swahili, both Bantu languages, are related to the different languages that they’ve been in contact with. They also get enthusiastic about Bantu languages in general and especially how the famous Bantu noun class system works. (Swahili, for example, has 16 different noun classes. including humans, natural things that aren’t human, abstract nouns, places, and words that begin with ki-.)
This month’s bonus episode was about naming people, a topic which has been on Lauren’s mind a lot recently! Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to this and over 20 previous bonus episodes.
Here are the links related in this episode:
Hannah Gibson, University of Essex website
Blog post by Hannah on the research process and finding the construction she was working on in another language, Simbiti
Research talk by Hannah with more details about her research on language contact in the Rift Valley (youtube)
Paper by Hannah on word order change in Rangi
Grammatical gender (Wikipedia)
Lauren’s football fan analogy of linguistics (Superlinguo)
Bantu languages (Wikipedia)
Great Rift Valley (Wikipedia)
Languages of Tanzania (Wikipedia)
Language contact (Wikipedia)
Auxiliary verbs (Wikipedia)
SOAS, University of London
University of Dar es salaam: Department of Swahili Language and Linguistics and Department Of Foreign Languages And Linguistics
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Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.
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Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, our editorial producers are A.E. Prévost and Sarah Dopierala, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.