Gudrun Miehe Books
The present volume contains a collection of historical Swahili poems created at the time of German colonial rule in Tanzania (1884–1914) which express the contemporary situation of the inhabitants. Using epic poems and praise songs the German conquest and African resistance is described in detail. The presented poems are highly differentiated regarding form, style and language and therefore provide an excellent survey of the different poetic forms/modes of expression of the time. The texts were primarily drawn from the numerous poem collections of the German Swahili researcher Carl Velten (1862–1935). The reader is provided with an extensive historical introduction, detailing the resistance of East Africans to German occupation of the coastal region (1888–1890), followed by a description of the Hehe wars, the war against Hassan bin Omari, the bombardment of Zanzibar and the Maji-Maji insurrection (1904–1905). The historiographical account is significantly enhanced by the Swahili poems that can be regarded as as a distinguishing feature of the period. The introduction provides further analysis of the style and linguistic features of the poems, apart from biographical data on the poets and the original editors. Because of the historical context of the poems and their linguistic complexity, the anthology will be of interest to historians and general linguists as well as to Bantuists.
This volume contains the results of the Bayreuth SFB research program ''Effects of globalization processes on the vitality of languages in West African cities". Two towns with different historical and colonial background, Maiduguri in Nigeria and Banfora in Burkina Faso, have been selected as research areas. The contrast between language and social institutions is most obvious in the colonial and post-colonial world in Africa. Colonization was characterized by the importation of European institutions which were of a qualitatively new nature linked to the globalizing forces. To characterize this qualitative newness we used the term ''direct globalization". A basic observation is that the globalizing forces led to a hierarchicalization of languages in Africa which is not obviously attested in the institutions of direct globalization. We introduced the term ''indirect globalization" to describe the alignment of local practices to the external forces and institutions introduced during a globalizing colonial and post-colonial experience.
Das Swahili-Handbuch ist das Ergebnis einer Zusammenarbeit vieler renommierter Swahili-Experten und -Lektoren aus dem In- und Ausland. Es dient als Lehr- und Nachschlagewerk für fortgeschrittene Studenten und Swahilisten. Die Beiträge nutzen das Potenzial der Autoren und behandeln nicht nur ein tieferes Sprachverständnis, sondern auch breitere Themen wie Dialektforschung, Sprachgeschichte, Lehnwortforschung, Idiomatik und Dichtung. Eine umfangreiche Bibliographie sowie ein Personen- und Sachverzeichnis erhöhen den praktischen Wert des Handbuchs. Die Inhalte umfassen unter anderem die Forschungsgeschichte, die Swahili-Sprachgeschichte, Dialekte, Derivation, Diminutiva, Adjektiva, Relativsätze, Tempus, Aspekt und Modalität, unpersönliche Konstruktionen, Wortstellung, Diskursarten, moderne Textformen, stilistische Merkmale der Versdichtung sowie Lehnwort- und Neologismenforschung. Idiomatische Wendungen und Sprichwörter werden ebenfalls behandelt. Die Rezension hebt hervor, dass dieses Handbuch als Standardwerk in der deutschsprachigen und internationalen Swahilistik angesehen werden kann. Es wird als wertvoll und attraktiv beschrieben, da es den Anforderungen eines anspruchsvollen Handbuchs für Fortgeschrittene gerecht wird und sowohl wissenschaftlich als auch didaktisch gelungen ist. Die hervorragende Gestaltung des Buches trägt zur hohen Qualität bei.