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Gurage Notes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Edward Ullendorff
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Extract

The existence of the country and people of the Gurage in Ethiopia has long been known in Europe from the writings of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. A few references to the Gurage may also be found in Ludolf's Historia Aethiopica (1681), and Bruce's Travels (vol. iv, pp. 147 et seq.) contain some amusing accounts of Gurage activities. Bruce thought they were ‘troglodytes and all robbers; their constant occupation is attending the Abyssinian camps, and stealing horses, mules, or whatever they can get, which they do in a very singular manner’. He then describes such a Gurage robbery in some detail and remarks that when the culprit was finally apprehended, he was found to speak ‘the Amharic language as well as his own, contrary to what the villain had all along pretended’.

Résumé

NOTES SUR LA LANGUE GOURAGUÉ

Malgré que l'existence du peuple et de la langue gouragué en Éthiopie soit connue depuis le 16ème siècle, cette langue est encore une des langues sémitiques de l'Éthiopie les moins connues, et une grammaire complète, basée sur des recherches entreprises dans la région, serait très nécessaire, d'autant plus que, par sa situation géographique, la langue gouragué met en évidence des effets réciproques de langues sémitiques et couchitiques. M. Wolf Leslau a publié récemment la première partie des résultats d'une étude linguistique entreprise en Éthiopie en 1946-7, intitulée Éthiopic Documents: Gurage. Ce livre comprend les éléments de grammaire, des textes gouragués, avec une version littérale intérlinéaire et une traduction libre, ainsi qu'un lexique. L'auteur de cet article critique quelques détails de l'étude faite par M. Leslau, tels que le manque d'une carte linguistique et d'une description générale du pays et du peuple. Il suggère, également, que le fait que tous les informateurs employés par lui etaient masculins et catholiques aurait pu exercer une influence défavorable sur la valeur des matériaux obtenus. Après une discussion détaillée sur certaines questions linguistiques et phonétiques, le Docteur Ullendorf fait remarquer la grande valeur et I'intérêt de la collection bien typique de textes gouragues rassemblee par M. Leslau et termine son article en attirant I'attention sur de nombreuses ressemblances entre le gouragué et les langues tigrinya, harari, amharique, soudanaise et galla, et en suggérant le besoin d'une etude systématique des conformités étymologiques dans les diverses langues éthiopiques.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , October 1950 , pp. 335 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1950

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References

page 335 note 1 For the distribution of Gurage, see map in Bryan, M. A., The Distribution of the Semitic and Cushitic Languages of Africa, O.U.P. for International African Institute, 1947.Google Scholar

page 335 note 2 It is probably only equalled in this deficiency by Gafat and Argobba, whereas Ge'ez and Amharic have been well covered, Tigrinya and Harari somewhat less so, and Tigre only slightly more adequately than Gurage.

page 336 note 1 Ethiopic Documents: Gurage. By Leslau, Wolf. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 14; New York, 1950. Pp. 176, 12 plates. §3‘3·00.Google Scholar

page 337 note 1 Hitherto Ethiopia's only modern historian; see his Amharic History of the people of Ethiopia, Asmara, 1927, p. 49.Google Scholar

page 337 note 2 i.e. the present Gurage region.

page 337 note 3 for -ge cf. Guidi, , Vocabolario Amarico, col. 701.Google Scholar

page 337 note 4 During the Italian occupation of Ethiopia Gura was the H.Q. of the Italian Air Force in East Africa and is described, in characteristic terms, by the excellent Guida dell'Africa Orientale Italiana (p. 268) as ‘il più grande campo d'aviazione che sia mai esistito nel continente’.

page 338 note 1 It would be very interesting to learn what these special signs for Gurage are.

page 339 note 1 Leslau's reference to it in Journal Asiatique, 1939, p. 65Google Scholar, as a dialectal peculiarity of the Hamasien province is not in accordance with the facts; it occurs wherever Tigrinya is spoken, although this may not necessarily become apparent from written documents.

page 339 note 2 As the reviewer knows Gurage only from books, he cannot, of course; judge whether the author's method has led to similar difficulties here.

page 339 note 3 A good factual statement may, however, be found in M. A. Bryan, op. cit., p. 11.

page 339 note 4 For Sidamo see Cerulli's valuable Studi Etiopici, vols. ii and iii, Rome, 1938.Google Scholar

page 340 note 1 While this article was in the press, Leslau's short article on ‘Le problème de la gémination du verbe Tchaha (Gouragué)’, in Word, vol. iv, no. i, became accessible to me. There remains, however, much that needs further elucidation and this will presumably be found in the author's promised detailed grammar of Chaha.

page 341 note 1 Among those nouns for which Leslau shows different roots for singular and plural, that for ‘woman’ may possibly not have to be included, for mǝšt and ǝšta may conceivably belong to the same root, the initial labial having been dropped (perhaps by way of w ?).

page 341 note 2 I am indebted to Dr. C. Rabin for drawing my attention to the parallel phenomenon of the Accadian modus energicus which, of course, has similar significance.

page 341 note 3 However, even in the author's method of transcription this should become apparent in verbs where the second radical is either a liquid or a spirantizable consonant.