Sponsor
The primary source of financial support for the project and hence this primer came from the Arcadia Fund, Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Documentation Programme, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (Major Language Documentation Grant: Project for the Documentation of the Sherbro Language and Culture (SLC), # MDP 0316, Sept 2016 – Aug 2018). Much of the preliminary, pilot work for the study was done with another grant from the Arcadia Fund and a grant from the National Science Foundation, whose support is gratefully acknowledged here.
Document Type
Dictionary
Publication Date
6-2018
Subjects
Sherbro (African people) -- Social life and customs, Sherbro language -- Primers
Disciplines
African Languages and Societies | Applied Linguistics
Physical Description
86 pages
Abstract
The Sherbro wring system uses a number of non‐English symbols that are explained in Appendix A at the end of the book. They are the standard symbols used in wring all other Sierra Leone languages (including Krio). The first obvious difference from English is that the symbols used to represent Sherbro vowels have quite different pronunciations from the leers used to represent vowel sounds in English. Other differences are relatively minor.
The book is organized as follows. After these prefatory remarks appears the text itself, which is divided into three sections and a set of appendices.
The first section, “The Sherbro alphabet” introduces the different consonant symbols used to write Sherbro. Each leer is introduced with a number of examples containing the leer. Vowels do not have their individual pages but are exemplified throughout the section. The palatal nasal [ɲ] is represented by the digraph and has no page of its own, forming part of the “N n” page. The labialvelar, occurring in such words as gbaka ‘laughter’ and gbal ‘write’, does not have its own page.
The next section, “Sherbro vocabulary”, introduces some Sherbro words organized into different categories. The categories are the family (ramdɛ), food (yenjoo or njoɛ), things or implements (yek / nyek), numbers or counting (tɔm), me (bonk), locaons (ko), clothes (kotha thɛ), body parts (jal or njallɛ), animals (vis or nvisɛ), the home (chɛli), the kitchen (boo or booɛ), on the sea (hɛlɛkoɛ), weather (hɔɛ), and states (thekni).
The third section contains a number of greetings and a selection of proverbs.
In the last section, Appendices, you will find an explanation of the symbols used in this book (Appendix A) and a glossary of all the words used in this book (Appendix B)
Location
Africa, Sierra Leone
Languages
Sherbro, English
ISO 639
bun, eng
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/28293
Citation Details
Childs, George Tucker and Bendu, Abdulai, "Let's Speak Bolom! The First Sherbro Primer: A Graphic Introduction to the Sherbro Language of Sierra Leone" (2018). The Sherbro Language and Culture of Sierra Leone. 153.
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/28293
Description
Compiled and illustrated by Sasha Krafft. Layout and publishing by Jedd Schrock.