Browsing by Author "Uushona, Johannes"

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    Germanising Oshiwambo language: Phonological integration of German loan words into Oshiwambo
    (University of Namibia, 2018) Uushona, Johannes; Mbenzi, Petrus A.
    Oshiwambo, a Bantu language spoken in Northern Namibia and Southern Angola, like other languages in contact, has adopted foreign words from other languages to meet the needs of its daily life vocabularies and activities. This paper identified and described the phonological changes which the loanwords from German go through to fit into Oshiwambo speech system and established the phonological rules that account for these changes. The paper is based on the hypothesis that words borrowed from other languages, especially European languages, into Oshiwambo, are phonologically modified to fit the Oshiwambo speech system because little information is available on the phonological wambonisation of German words. The data were collected from school textbooks, daily conversations and personal vocabularies of the researcher. The loanwords were transcribed for phonological analysis. The paper investigated how Oshiwambo borrowed words from German yet the two languages differ widely in terms of phonemic inventories and phonotactics. It has become evident that there are several vowel and consonant changes in the process of borrowing. The paper contributes to the linguistic study in the area of Oshiwambo in particular and Bantu languages in general. The knowledge acquired could be utilized by the institutions of higher learning too.
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    An investigation into the phenological and morphological integration of German loanwords into Oshiwambo
    (University of Namibia, 2019) Uushona, Johannes
    Oshiwambo, a Bantu language spoken in Northern Namibia and Southern Angola, like other languages in contact, has adapted foreign words from other languages to meet the needs of its daily life vocabularies and activities. This thesis is based on the hypothesis that words borrowed from other languages, especially European languages, into Oshiwambo, are phonologically and morphologically modified to fit the Oshiwambo speech system. The data were collected from school textbooks, daily conversations and personal vocabularies of the researcher. The study investigated how Oshiwambo borrowed words from German, yet the two languages differ widely in terms of phonemic inventories and phonotactics. Borrowing of words from German to Oshiwambo required phonological and morphological processes to enable the transfer of characteristics of one language into the other. The study identified and described the phonological and morphological changes which the loanwords from German go through to fit into the Oshiwambo speech system. The study further established the phonological rules that account for these changes. The study adopted the Natural Generative Phonology theory which was propagated by Hopper (1976) and the general word formation theory as the theoretical framework. The loanwords were transcribed for phonological and morphological analysis. It was evident that there were lots of vowel and consonant changes in the process of borrowing. It was also evident that Oshiwambo borrowed nouns, adjectives and verbs from German. Any word (noun) that had been borrowed from German was assigned a class based on semantics, phonology or morphology. The study contributes to the linguistic study in Oshiwambo in particular and Bantu languages in general. The knowledge acquired could be utilized by the institutions of higher learning too. It is recommended that more research like the current study should be conducted for the rest of the remaining European languages as source languages from which Oshiwambo has borrowed words, as a way to trace the origin of loanwords.