silesr2012 040.

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Digital

Resources

_{Electronic Survey Report 2012-040}

Rapport sur une Enquête

Sociolinguistique Parmi les

Mokoulou dans le Guéra

au Tchad

With a review in English

by David Sharp

William Chesley, Heather Coates,

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Rapport sur une Enquête Sociolinguistique

Parmi les Mokoulou dans le Guéra au Tchad

William Chesley

Heather Coates

Mark Vanderkooi

Rachel Mundfrom

David Pearson

With a review in English by David Sharp

SIL International

®

2012

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Abstract

A 1990 sociolinguistic survey of the Mukulu [moz] speaking people of Chad (Mokoulou in French spelling) is presented here along with an update and review of the original survey, twenty two years later, by David Sharp who lived with the Mukulu people over a ten-year period ending in 2003 and has worked with them from a distance since then.

The purpose for the original survey was two-fold. A high level of bilingualism with Chadian Arabic had been reported so it was desired to know whether this was true generally for the whole population. The other goal was to learn the level of comprehension between speakers of the several dialects within Mukulu—and find which dialect could be considered for eventual standardization.

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1

Mukulu Survey Report Comments by David Sharp

The following comments are based on my experiences while living among the Mukulu people for ten years and helping to facilitate a language development project. I lived in the village of Mukulu with my wife and three children from November 1992 to early 2003.

Some significant steps in the language development project have been: an orthography statement, the publication of a first and second level primer, two transition primers (French-Mukulu and Mukulu-French), a maths booklet, and various health booklets and folktales to use as readers. A mother-tongue literacy program has been operating successfully for the last ten years, with both adult and preschool classes presently running in fourteen different locations within the Canton.

The following comments are of a general nature and are not meant in any way to disparage a report which is technically sound and whose final recommendations have been proven to be correct. Linguistic references at the time were extremely limited, and an important work on the language, the Lexique

Mokilko (Jungraithmayr 1990), was published only after the survey report was written.

1.1 Localisation

‘le nom “Mokoulou” signifie “montagne” dans leur langue’ (page 1)

The word for mountain is, in fact, ‘mokkolo’.

Footnote 1. Le terme “Mokoulou” s’emploie dans trois sens différents. Comme ici, il s’applique au peuple. Il est également utilisé pour faire référence à la langue parlée par tout le peuple Mokoulou, et finalement, il s’agit du dialecte parlé par les habitants du village appelé “Mokoulou”. (page 1)

Here the term “Mokoulou” is used in four different senses, not just three—the people, the language in general, a particular dialect, and a village. This observed use of the name is more by or for “outsiders” than “insiders”. If the people use an umbrella term for themselves it is geergagi (the people who live around Mount Guera). The umbrella term they use to refer to their language (that is, the collection of different dialects) is geergiko (the language spoken by the geergagi). The principal village referred to is in fact mukulu or mookul, and the dialect spoken there is mookilko.

…les villages ont été choisis de telle sorte que chacun des quatre dialectes ou “accents3” reconnus par les Mokoulou eux-mêmes soit représenté dans le corpus. Les quatre villages retenus étaient Mokoulou et Doli à l’extrême Sud et à l’extrême Nord, Seguine à l’Est, et Djerkajei à l’Ouest. (page 4)

Footnote 3. Nous adoptons le terme “accent” ici avec le sens d’une variété d’un dialecte qui se distingue des autres “accents” par une variation phonétique considérée comme insuffisante pour justifier sa désignation comme un dialecte différent. Chaque village à généralement son propre “accent”. (page 4)

The above comments about the dialect situation are generally supported by Herrmann Jungraithmayr in

his Lexique Mokilko (1990), where he notes the following : “On constate selon les villages mentionnés

ci-dessus les dialectes ou les façons de parler suivants dans la langue mokilko: móòkìlkó de Moukoulou,

séègìnkó de Seguine, dóòlìkó de Doli, móorìkó de Morgué, mézìmkó de Djerkatché et gùugìkó de Gougué.

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2 4 Tests de Textes Enregistrés

4.3 Conclusions

…il y a au moins quatres dialectes de la langue…on devrait pourtant admettre que l’on n’a pas encore déterminé la nature de la différence entre ces parlers, et il n’est pas faux d’avancer l’hypothèse selon laquelle certains ou tous ces “dialectes” seraient considérés plus justement comme “accents”. (page 13,14)

…le mokoulou doit être considéré comme le dialecte “standard” de la langue puisqu’il est compris par tous, mais que tous ne le comprennent pas toujours bien. (page 14)

Concernant la possibilité d’utiliser une seule orthographe pour ces parlers quelque peu différents…un des intellectuels de Mokoulou…a confirmé que, selon ses estimations, la différence avec le parler djerkajei est principalement d’ordre phonétique. La structure phonologique des mots et la syntaxe sont fondamentalement les mêmes que celles du parler de Mokoulou … (page 14)

In my experience, the difference between the different varieties of the language is indeed slight. Further, the choice of the language variety or dialect spoken at the village of Mukulu as the standard for

developing the language has been borne out in practice. A broad range of literacy materials (primers, readers, health booklets, etc.) is being used without significant problems in all the major villages of the language area. While I have not done a study of dialectal differences, I can confirm that the main areas of difference are relatively minor, being in vowel quality and length and in certain items of vocabulary. For example, in Mukulu one typically uses the response bee _ɗey (‘still well’) in greetings, whereas in Seguine one says bee_ɗii. Such differences are only to be expected when one considers that in the distant past the various villages were located on different mountain peaks and at times were in a state of conflict with each other. However, I have also noted that even speakers from different sections of the village of Mukulu (which has a large population and covers an extensive area) can have slight differences in pronunciation, and insist that theirs is the correct way of saying it!

5 Questionnaires sur le Bilinguisme

5.2 Analyse

En général, les hommes et les “jeunes” ont souvent été compétents à un niveau plus élevé en arabe que les “vieux” et les femmes. Les seuls scores vraiment décisifs étaient parmi les hommes de Mokoulou où tous les dix ont obtenu un score de niveau 4 ou au-delà. Ce n’est pas évident à première vue de savoir pourquoi cela était le cas : Mokoulou est le village le plus éloigné de Bitkine, et le centre commercial le plus proche est Melfi, encore plus loin au sud… (page 16)

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