About
Background
Karai-Karai (also spelled Karekare, Kerrikerri) is spoken in West Africa, most prominently in northeastern Nigeria. It is a West Chadic language spoken mainly in Yobe State, particularly to the north and west of Potiskum, with additional speakers in Bauchi, Gombe, Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, Jigawa, and Kano states. Native speakers call it Bòo Karai-karai, and it is closely related to the Bole and Ngamo languages spoken in the same area. The Karai-Karai people themselves use the autonyms Bakarkarai (male) and Bakarkariya (female).
Karai-Karai is considered an endangered language.
Contributors
The data in this dictionary was collected by Musaddam Idriss Musa, an independent researcher and language activist.
Data Sources
Data was collected through fieldwork interviews, audio recordings, and community consultations. In addition, this dictionary draws on the Karekare-English-Hausa Dictionary (2nd edition, 2009), produced by the Yobe Languages Research Project (UCLA Department of Linguistics), available at: https://aflang.humanities.ucla.edu/language-materials/chadic-languages/yobe/dictionaries-yobe-languages/
Audience and Use
This dictionary is intended for the Karai-Karai community, students, researchers, linguists, and language activists.
Contact
For questions about this project, please contact: realmusaddam@gmail.com
From the Karekare-English-Hausa Dictionary (second edition, 2009)
Most of the entries in this dictionary, together with their Hausa equivalents, grammatical categories, plural forms and example sentences, come from the Karekare-English-Hausa Dictionary, second edition (Yobe Languages Research Project, Ajami Press, Potiskum, 2009), by Abubakar Idris Tikau and Ibrahim Yusuf, with the late Malam Kariya Gambo, Umaru Manu Karofi, the late Dauda Mamu and Rifkatu I. Bumi, edited by Russell G. Schuh. The sections below are adapted from that book's introduction so that its readers' key is available here; the words are the authors' and editor's, lightly shortened.
From the editor's introduction
The 2009 book is the second edition of the dictionary. The first edition was published in 2004 by the Yobe Languages Research Project. The second edition was expanded by several hundred items, grammatical information and examples of use were added to entries, and many corrections, both typographical and substantive, were made.
A few short wordlists of Karekare were published in the 19th and 20th centuries, but prior to the 2004 first edition the only published works on Karekare using modern linguistic analysis were Tschadohamitische Sprachproben aus Nordnigerien (Karekare- und Bolanci-Texte) by Johannes Lukas (Deutsches Institut für Afrika-Forschung, 1966) and The Orthography of the Karai-Karai Language by Adamu Hassan (Karai-karai Language Committee, 1988). There is some dialectal variation in Karekare, but dialect distinctions are not sharp and do not impede intelligibility across the Karekare community; the dictionary therefore did not attempt to adhere strictly to the forms of a single dialect.
The editor described the second edition as a work in progress: there undoubtedly remain inaccuracies, typographical slips, and many words that should be in a Karekare dictionary but remain to be assembled. The name of the language is actually pronounced Karai-Karai; the spelling "Karekare" was retained in the book because it is the most familiar in published works on the language.
How the entries were built
In the 2009 book each entry minimally consists of a Karekare headword, its grammatical category, an English definition and a Hausa definition. The Hausa definitions consist mainly of one-word equivalents; they are absent from many entries because simple equivalents were not readily available. Verbs are entered in the form they have in the completive with a singular subject, with no extensions and with the completive marker -kàu / -kò removed; each verbal entry also gives the verbal noun ("v.n."), which here appears in the word's morphology notes. Plural forms accompany some noun and adjective entries, but the dictionary did not attempt to list every acceptable plural for every noun. Nouns whose gender was explicitly checked are marked masculine or feminine (see the Grammar page on gender); most nouns are simply listed as nouns, meaning either that the gender was not checked or that it varies.
Special terms used in the English definitions
Cultural differences make it impossible to find satisfactory English equivalents for a number of common items of Yobe State culture, especially foods. Rather than use English terms that would not convey the right connotations, the English definitions use these Hausa words:
| Hausa word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| tuwo | staple food made from guinea corn or maize flour, rice, or another starch base, cooked to a stiff consistency |
| miya | a "sauce" or "stew", usually with a vegetable base such as okra, sorrel, baobab or tomatoes, often with meat or fish, served with tuwo |
| kunu | a "gruel" of finely ground flour, cooked to a relatively thin consistency, usually flavoured with tamarind or lime juice |
| fura | millet flour, cooked and formed into balls that are broken up and mixed into a liquid, preferably cultured milk, sometimes water |
| faifai | a round tray woven from grass, often with designs woven in with grass of different colours; used as a pot or bowl cover, a mat for small objects, a tool for separating bran from flour, and, decorated with cowries or coins, as room decoration |
| zana | a mat made from interwoven heavy grass, used as a fence, granary liner and for other functions |
Abbreviations used in the 2009 book
The grammatical categories in this dictionary follow the Living Dictionaries list; the labels below are the ones the book printed. Where a label had no exact equivalent, the book's label is recorded in the word's morphology notes.
| Book label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| adj. | adjective |
| adj.participle | participle usable as an adjective, e.g. "broken (pot)" |
| adv. · adv.loc. · adv.man. · adv.time | adverb · locative adverb ("outside", "there") · manner adverb ("with difficulty", "thus") · time adverb ("today", "last year") |
| aux. | auxiliary particle indicating verb tense and the like |
| clitic | a form added at the beginning or end of a word |
| conj. | conjunction ("and", "if", "until") |
| det. · det.def. · det.dem. · det.indef. | determiner · definite determiner ("the") · demonstrative ("this", "those") · indefinite determiner ("a", "some") |
| existential | word meaning "there's…", "there's no…" |
| f. · m. | feminine · masculine |
| gen.linker | particle meaning "of", as in "ear of a sheep" |
| id. · id.adj. | ideophone, a large class of words that emphasize actions or qualities · ideophonic adjective, an ideophone-like word that can modify nouns |
| idiom | an expression whose meaning is not predictable from its parts |
| interjection | all types of exclamations, expressions, greetings |
| interr. · interr.adv. · interr.det. · interr.pro. | interrogative word · interrogative adverb ("how?", "when?") · interrogative determiner ("which…?") · interrogative pronoun ("who?") |
| n. · n.mass · n.pl. | noun · mass noun ("water", "millet") · plural noun |
| num.card. · num.ord. | cardinal number · ordinal number |
| part. | particle added to reinforce meaning, like Hausa dai, ma |
| pl. | plural |
| plac. | pluractional verb indicating multiple action |
| prep. | preposition |
| presentative | word meaning "here's…" when offering something |
| pro. · pro.1 sg. · pro.1 pl. · pro.2 sg.m. · pro.2 sg.f. · pro.2 pl. · pro.3 sg.m. · pro.3 sg.f. · pro.3 pl. | pronoun, with person, number and gender |
| quant. · quant.univ. | quantifier ("all", "a few") · universal quantifier ("everything", "whoever") |
| stat. | stative derived from a verb, such as "seated" |
| v.A1 · v.A2a · v.A2b · v.A2c · v.B · v.B2 · v.C · v.D | verb of the named class (see the Grammar page on verb classes) |
| v.ext. | verbal extension, showing action done in this direction, etc. |
| v.irreg. | irregular verb, not fitting one of the regular classes |
| v.n. | verbal noun |
Acknowledgements (from the 2009 book)
The Karekare wordlist that formed the original basis from which the authors worked was compiled in Potiskum in 1969–70 by Maxine Schuh, working with several Karekare speakers. The Orthography of the Karai-Karai Language by Adamu Hassan proved valuable both for its description of Karekare and for wordlists that included many items that might not otherwise have come to the compilers' attention. The late Malam Kariya Gambo, Umaru Manu Karofi, the late Dauda Mamu and Rifkatu I. Bumi worked together with the editor from 2002 to 2004 to create the first edition, with the support of a grant from the US National Science Foundation (award BCS-0111289, Russell G. Schuh, Principal Investigator); its production was in part made possible by donations from the Tikau Emirate Council and from Hon. Adamu Usman Dazigau. The second edition was compiled by the authors and editor with the support of a further National Science Foundation grant (award BCS-0553222). Alhaji Maina Gimba was In-Country Director of both projects.
The authors and the editor thanked HRH Mai Tikau, Alhaji Muhammadu Abubakar ibn Grema, and the Tikau Emirate Council for their continued support; Malam Madu Liman, Registrar of the College of Education Zuba, Abuja, Halima Madu Liman and the Madu Liman household for indispensable logistic support; Alhaji Ali Goni and Malam Saleh Adamu for helping to create a smooth working environment; Jeffrey Heinz and Sarah Foxe of the UCLA Linguistics Department for technical contributions; and Roger Blench, who provided the comprehensive list of Hausa botanical names and modern genetic classification on which the plant identifications are based.
Russell G. Schuh, Editor. Potiskum, February 2009. Contacts given in the book: Russell G. Schuh, Department of Linguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles; Alhaji Maina Gimba, Department of English, University of Maiduguri, Borno State.