Our People’s Own (Ina Lamang)

Traditions and Specimens of Oral Literature from Gwàɗ Làmàŋ Speaking Peoples in the Southern Lake Chad Basin in Central Africa

Compiled by: H. Ekkehard Wolff. Edited by: H. Ekkehard Wolff. In collaboration with: Eleonore Adwiraah, Alhaji Abdullahi Ndaghra. Series founded by: Johannes Lukas †. Series edited by: Hilke Meyer-Bahlburg, H. Ekkehard Wolff.

Series: AFO Afrikanistische Forschungen Volume XI

The central Chadic language Lamang is spoken in northeastern Nigeria and northern Cameroon. However, its estimated 100,000 speakers do not form a separate ethnic group. The present compilation consists of transcriptions of various oral traditions in the Lamang language collected by the editor during two field researches in the Goza region of Nigeria in 1968–1969 and 1973–1974.

The texts deal with the traditional system of beliefs and religious rituals, the human life cycle, traditional law, myths of origin and migration, local history, and a selection of songs, fables and moral tales.

The editor favours an emic perspective, allowing members of the Lamang community to speak for themselves. Thus, the English translations, which form the main part of the book, closely follow the structure of the Lamang texts to reflect their characteristic word order and metaphors as truthfully as possible. Full transcriptions of the Lamang originals are given in an appendix. Additional appendices deal with the kinship systems of several Lamang-speaking groups and provide glossaries of cultural and kinship terms.

A grammar of Lamang and a dictionary have been published in the same series, as well as further descriptions of languages and cultures of the Biu-Mandara branch of the Chadic language family:

Accompanying material:

• Dictionary of Hdi (ISBN 978-3-89645-299-3)
• Dictionnaire Mofu-Gudur – Français – Fulfulde (ISBN 978-3-89645-423-2)
• The Lamang Language and Dictionary (ISBN 978-3-89645-294-8)
• The Lamang Language and Dictionary (ISBN 978-3-89645-296-2)
• The Lamang Language and Dictionary (ISBN 978-3-89645-297-9)

Cross-reference:

• Advances in Minority Language Research in Nigeria vol. I (ISBN 978-3-89645-426-3)
• Dictionnaire muyang–français–anglais (ISBN 978-3-89645-431-7)
• Die Mafa im Spiegel ihrer oralen Literatur (ISBN 978-3-89645-126-2)
• The Ways of the Mandara Mountains (ISBN 978-3-89645-464-5)
• Topics in Chadic Linguistics III Historical Studies (ISBN 978-3-89645-523-9)
• Topics in Chadic Linguistics VI (ISBN 978-3-89645-526-0)

© 2024 by Rüdiger Köppe Verlag – www.koeppe.de

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