Yaaku is a Lowland East Cushitic language spoken in central Kenya. In particular, it is spoken near the village of Dol Dol near Nanyuki, a town in the Laikipia District. There are currently only a small number of elderly speakers, most of whom are over 90 years old, and a few others who can understand the language and/or speak it to some extent.
Yaaku is also known as Yaakunte, Mukogodo, Mogogodo, Mukoquodo, Siegu, Yaakua or Ndorobo.
It is said that the Yaaku people had a meeting in the 1930s and decided to give up their language and culture and adopt the Maasai language and culture. They perceived the Maasai culture as superior, although they retained their bee-keeping vocabulary in Yaaku as they are traditionally bee-keepers. They ended up speaking a variety of Maasai known as Mukogodo-Maasai.
Yaaku was first documented in the 1970s by Professor Bernd Heine, a linguist and specialist in African studies at the University of Cologne in Germany. In the early 21st century, efforts began to revive the Yaaku language and culture. The tribe invited the Dutch researchers, Maarten Mous, Hans Stoks and Matthijs Blonk, to help them document and revitalize Yaaku. They concluded that it might not be possible to fully revive the language, but they could increase the number of Yaaku words in use. Yaaku is taught in one school a few times a month.
Yaaku can be written with the Latin alphabet using a spelling system proposed by Maarten Mous, a specialist in African Linguistics at the Linguistics Department of Leiden University in the Netherlands. A high tone is indicated with an acute accent (á).
Download an alphabet chart for Yaaku (Excel)
Information about the Yaaku language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaaku_language
https://www.matthijsblonk.nl/Archief/paginas/YaakuENG.htm
https://yaaku.org/
https://www.academia.edu/33937531/Yaaku_and_Ma_á_An_Endangered_Language_and_the_Way_Out_ The_Yaaku_of_Kenya_and_their_Language
https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/yaak1241
https://101lasttribes.com/tribes/yaaku.html
Afaan-Oromo, Afar, Awngi, Beja, Blin, Daasanach, Dirasha, Gawwada, Hadiyya, Iraqw, Maay Maay, Rendille, Saho, Sidama, Somali, Southern Oromo, Waata, Xamtanga, Yaaku
Languages written with the Latin alphabet
Page created: 09.12.24. Last modified: 09.12.24
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