Kikimbu: Documenting nomadism in central Tanzania

Kimbu (ISO 639-3 kiv; glottolog kimb1242) is a Niger-Congo Narrow Bantu language spoken in central Tanzania by about 62 000 people (Muzale and Rugemalira 2008). Despite the relatively small number of speakers, the language community is spread throughout a large portion of west-central Tanzania, including the Singida, Tabora, and Mbeya regions.  This seems to be a result of the Kimbu people’s semi-nomadic lifestyle (Simons and Fenig 2018) - a unique state of affairs is that most Bantu-speaking people in central Tanzania are sedentary agriculturalists.  Indeed, this thinly-spread population (few people distributed throughout vast areas in which other languages such as Nyilamba, Nyamwezi, and Nyakyusa are spoken by the majority) contributes in a major way to Kimbu’s status as an endangered language.  This talk provides an overview of the ELDP-funded project which will take place over the coming year to document the Kimbu language and elements of nomadism present in Kimbu culture.