Peji speaking Sukuma

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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Dropbox (.mp4)

This video was recorded by Daniel Bogre Udell in the US state of Pennsylvania. Sukuma, also known as Kisukuma, is spoken in northern Tanzania close to the city of Mwanza. According to Glottolog, among Sukuma's recognized dialects are Gwe (Kemunangweeli, Kigwe) and Kiya (Kemunadakama). Sukuma's status is considered vigorous, meaning that its usage extends across speaker generations, it is a native language (L1) for many people, and its numbers are observed to be increasing. Several Sukuma speakers also speak Swahili as a second language. Sukuma is very closely related to Nyamwezi, another major Bantu language, with 84% lexical similarity, and they are so close that they form a dialect continuum. Sukuma is spoken by around 5,430,000 people. It is a Central Narrow Bantu language within the Atlantic-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family.

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