Chris Collins: Sasi Dictionary (Botswana) [PDF]

2024
115 pp.

Text language: English

Sasi is a language whose speakers are found in eastern Botswana in and around Mokgenene, Poloka and nearby cattle posts and farms (as of 2024). The speakers themselves refer to the language as ŋǃaˤa. It is mutually intelligible with ǂHoan. Together with ǂHoan, it forms the ǂʔAmkoe branch of Kx’a. For a preliminary grammatical description of Sasi, and a discussion of its relation to ǂHoan, see Collins and Gruber 2014 (vol. 32 of the same Khoisan series, see the link below).

The dictionary has nearly 1,400 entries many of which have multiple senses. Each entry has both an English and a Setswana (S.31) gloss. Most of the entries have example phrases and sentences. A short reverse English-Sasi dictionary follows the Sasi-English-Setswana dictionary. The dictionary is based on around 32,000 sound files recorded on Praat using a Zoom H4n recorder as an audio-interface (sampling rate 44,100Hz). Each sound file contains a word (usually repeated two or three times), or a phrase used as an example in a lexical entry. Each word has been recorded with multiple speakers, usually both men and women. The sound files are available upon request to the author. The dictionary is also based on 3.5 hours of transcribed oral texts collected, transcribed and translated during the academic year 2019-2020.

Under these links you will find publications by Chris Collins, descriptions of further Khoisan languages and cultures of southern Africa and a couple of analyses and dictionaries of Setswana (S.31):