Samburu language

Samburu
Sampur, ɔl Maa
Native to	Kenya
Region	Samburu district of Rift Valley Province
Native speakers	240,000 (2009 census)[1] (including Camus)
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Saharan Eastern Nilotic Lotuxo–Teso Lotuxo–Maa Maa Samburu
Dialects	Camus
Language codes
ISO 639-3	saq
Glottolog	samb1315[2]

Samburu is the Eastern Nilotic, North Maa language spoken by the Samburu in the highlands of northern Kenya. The Samburu number about 128,000 (or 147,000 including the Camus/Chamus). Samburu is closely related to Camus (88% to 94% lexical similarity; Camus is sometimes considered a Samburu dialect) and to the South Maa language Maasai (77% to 89% lexical similarity). The word Samburu itself derives from the old Maa word 'saamburr' for the leather bag the Samburu use.

References

1. Samburu at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Samburu". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

• Rainer Vossen. The Eastern Nilotes: Linguistic and Historical Reconstructions. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag 1982. ISBN 3-496-00698-6.

External links

• Maa Language Project
• Embuku E Sayiata Too Ltung'ana Pooki Maasai-Samburu Anglican Prayer Book (1967), digitized by Richard Mammana

Several different tribes in Kenya use this language, The Ilchamus, for example.