Universal Dependencies - English - GUM

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2. GUJJOLAAY EEGIMAA, ITS SPEAKERS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS

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This section briefly presents the Gújjolaay Eegimaa (Eegimaa for short; Ethnologue code: ISO 639-3: bqj), its speakers and its varieties.

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We also discuss aspects of the contact situation of the Eegimaa language.

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This is important, because as we will show in § 6 below, some of the Eegimaa death prevention names and child-bearing names are given to Eegimaa people from other communities.

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Eegimaa is a Jóola language spoken in the Basse Casamance area of Southern Senegal by a population estimated to be between 7,000 (Bassène, 2007) and 11,200 speakers (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig, 2014).

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Jóola languages are classified as members of Sapir’s (1971) BAK group of Atlantic languages of the Niger Congo language phylum.

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Speakers of these languages are found in the Gambia, in the former Casamance region of Southern Senegal and in Guinea Bissau.

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The map in Figure 1, taken from Ethnologue, presents the languages of Senegal.

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The arrow on the map points to the Eegimaa speaking area (Bandial is the name used by Ethnologue for Eegimaa).

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Eegimaa is mainly spoken in Mof-Ávvi, a former kingdom of 10 villages located to the west of Ziguinchor, the capital city of the former administrative region of Casamance in the south of Senegal.

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Mof-Ávvi is a peninsula bordered by the Casamance River to the north, which separates it from the Jóola Búluf and Jóola Fogny areas, and to the east by the villages Brin and Djibonker, where the speakers of Kujireray and Baïnounk Gubëeher live.

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In the south, the river known as Kamobeul Bolon separates Mof-Ávvi from the Bayot speaking area, while the west side of Mof-Ávvi coincides with the homeland of the Jóola Kaasa Húluf and Jóola Kaasa Ésuulaaluʔ.

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The map in Figure 2 below, adapted from Palmeri and Gazio (1995), shows a very approximate location of Mof-Ávvi in relation to other neighbouring speech communities.

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Some of these communities will be referred to in our discussion of death prevention names in § 6.

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The Eegimaa spoken in Mof-Ávvi is known by several names given by speakers of neighbouring languages.

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For example, the name Kusiilay 1 ‘the language of Essil’, is the name given by speakers of Kujireray to the Eegimaa language, because Essil, of which Bajjat was a district, is the village which has a border with their village.

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Endungo is the name given by Bayot speakers, but its meaning is not known.

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Kúlaakiay, ‘the language of village of Seleki/Sállagi’, is the name given by Jóola Kaasa speakers who are more familiar with the village of Seleki/Sállagi’ than all other villages of Mof-Ávvi.

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Finally, Banjal/Bandial ‘the language of the village of Banjal’, the most popular of all those names, is the name given by the Jóola Búluf and Jóola Fogny speakers to Eegimaa people and their language, because people from the village of Banjal were the first to be in contact with them.

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Figure 1.

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Map of Senegal (courtesy of Google maps)

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Figure 2.

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Map of the Eegimaa speaking area

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Village names are written using their usual spelling.

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The Ethnologue language codes are provided for language varieties that have them.

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Language names are written following the recommendation for the transcription of national languages of Senegal, Decree 2005-981.

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Names of the villages of Mof-Ávvi are written using the Eegimaa orthography and following the pronunciation of village names by native speakers.

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Jóola language varieties which are closely related to Eegimaa include Kujireray/Kuluunaay (from the village of Brin with 76% lexical similarity) and Gufiñamay (from the village of Afiniam with 74% lexical similarity (based on Lewis et al., 2014 eds.)).

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Gútaamay (from the village of Butam), Gulapaoray (from the village Djilapaor) and Gusiilay (ISO 639-3: bsl) from the village of Thionk Essil are also other languages related to Eegimaa.

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They are located north of the Casamance River in the Jóola Búluf area.

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There are also small migrant Eegimaa communities in villages like Djifanghor (east of Ziguinchor) and in Bourofaye (south of Ziguinchor), where they cohabit with speakers of Baïnounk languages.

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Nowadays most Eegimaa speakers from Mof-Ávvi live outside their homeland, generally in urban areas like Ziguinchor and Dakar.

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Speakers of Eegimaa use the term Gújjolaay (meaning Jóola) to refer to their language when they speak to each other, but Eegimaa to distinguish their Jóola variety from that of other Jóola peoples.

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Eegimaa is an endangered language whose transmission to new generations has been declining significantly in the last decades.

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It is important to understand the contact situation of Eegimaa, because some of the ritual names analysed in this paper come from other languages or from neighbouring communities.

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These names are given either in Eegimaa or in a different language.