Beschreibung
Kuria-speaking people number about one million, with a
homeland stretching from Kuria District in southwest Kenya
through to North and South Mara in northern Tanzania. This
is the first published dictionary of their language. It
has
been compiled especially with a view to its practical use,
employing the standard Swahili orthography and avoiding
complex grammatical notation. At the same time it is
concerned to show the great richness of Kuria as a language
which uses the full range of the common Bantu structural
forms of verb and noun to express subtleties of meaning. It
is intended partly as a record of the language and in this
respect will be of use to comparative linguists. (A
computerised version is available on disk.) It will be
essential to anyone wishing to learn the Kuria language,
including non-Kuria working in the area of Kenya and
Tanzania where Kuria is spoken, but it should also be of
interest to Kuria themselves, not least to Kuria school
pupils looking for direct access to English through their
own language.
Sammy M. Muniko was born in Buirege,
Kuria District, in 1946, trained as a teacher, and after
some years as an Education Officer became Headmaster of St.
Joseph Ntimaru Secondary School, a position he still holds.
He has written school reading texts and advised nationally
on the use of languages in schools.
Benedict Muita oMagige was a teacher who made an
extensive collection of Kuria proverbs, and owed much of
his
interest in Kuria traditional culture to his father, Joseph
Magige oTatwa, of Renchoka, a former prominent chief. Ben
died shortly after this dictionary was completed.
Malcolm J. Ruel is an Oxford trained social
anthropologist who compiled the original wordlist from which
this dictionary has developed. He has written widely on
Kuria culture and a collection of his essays on Kuria
religion and related topics is shortly to be published by
E. J. Brill.