Sengwer

About

This Sengwer Trilingual Dictionary was created as a collaborative effort between one linguist and the Sengwer community between March 2022 and April 2023. It is meant, first and foremost, as a tool for the community itself to conserve their linguistic and cultural heritage as well as a way to improve literacy and use in the younger generations. By documenting words and receiving consensus through community reviews and word-collection workshops, we worked to create a standard and a foundation that can be used as a reference for writing and education. In addition, this dictionary can also be a tool that linguists and other academics can use as a reference or inspiration for their research. The creation of the dictionary was funded by the Endangered Languages Fund (ELF) thorugh their Language Legacies grant. A version of this dictionary was printed and published by Moi University, Kenya. Unfortunately, it is not available to buy any longer. A few copies are still available for community members or universities. If you are one of these and would like a copy delivered, please feel free to contact us. Note on the IPA transcription The transcription used in this dictionary is phonemic. For consonants, this means that allophonic voicing and fricativization is not transcribed but can be heard in the recordings: /t/ can be heard as [d] in clusters /lt nt/ /c/ can be heard as [ɟ] in clusters /lc ɲc/ /k/ can be heard as [g] in clusters /lk ŋk/ and as /ɣ/ intervocalically /p/ can be heard as [b] in clusters /lp mp/ and as /β/ intervocalically liquids /j l r w/ can be heard as [ç ɬ r̥ w̥] utterance-finally. the cluster /sj/ can be heard as [ɕ] or [ʃ]. For vowels, the low +ATR vowel phoneme /ʌ/ can be heard to vary from [ɔ] to [ʌ]. This is because /ʌ/ and /ɔ/ have undergone a partial merger. A word like 'tyoony' is phonemically transcribed as /tjʌ̂ʌɲ/ but will sound in the recording as [tjɔ̂ɔɲ]. The Sengwer orthography does not make a difference between lexically +ATR morphemes…