Introduction

The Gusii people are scattered all over Kenya. This is as a result of migrations for those employed or running business outside the borders of Kisii and Nyamira Counties (Otieno and Mecha, 2019). Consequently, these migrants opt to use Kiswahili (regional lingua-franca) and English, reducing Ekegusii domains of use. Young people are no longer speaking Ekegusii as their first language.

Ekegusii language is at a critical stage where revitalization interventions are necessary to salvage a language that is suddenly highly endangered. The language aptly fits in with Krauss’, (1992) assertion that world languages are in a crisis and on the slippery path toward extinction. According to Rehg and Campbell, (2018), particular indicators tell of Ekegusii endangerment. The main criteria for an absolute number of speakers from the 2019 National census may not be as apt as 1) lack of intergenerational transmission. That is, the Ekegusii language is not being learnt by children anymore in the traditional way as passed on from one generation to the next, making it essentially doomed for extinction unless revitalization efforts are taken and become successful. Emphasis on modern education achievement has necessitated even banning the use of Ekegusii in school and other formal setups, and 2) decreasing the number of speakers. As the number of speakers decreases, the more endangered the language has become, and 3) decreases in domains of use; the more the domains in which the language is used are reduced, the greater its endangerment becomes.

Ekegusii speakers are faced with the arduous task of competing languages that are used in everyday life sniffing life and the utility of the Ekegusii language in daily linguistic usage. This means that the language is increasingly being eclipsed with ever lessening domains of use. For this reason, this language needs adequate documentation – creation, annotation, preservation, and dissemination of transparent records of the language where that record is understood explicitly to include language analysis and the production of a grammar and a dictionary, along with a rich corpus of recordings adequately archived (Rehg and Campbell, 2018) as in this present project.

Myriad factors exacerbate language endangerment in Gusiiland. The greatest reason for endangerment is that the community has undergone drastic social changes: the adoption of new religions, political organization, and bans on several customary practices. As a result, the language associated with customary behaviours is no longer being attended to suffer loss and is likely to be lost (Guerin and Yourupi, 2017).

Ekegusii is a tonal language. A tone language is a language in which both pitch phonemes enter into the composition of at least some morphemes. In many instances, the tone is taken to be a segmental property. The main idea is the use of pitch to create lexical contrast whereby, two or more words can have identical segments, but differ in meaning because they are produced with a different pitch pattern. The tone in Ekegusii is either high (H) or low (L) as in the following examples:

Orthography             pronunciation            gloss

biarwa                         /ꞵˋiarwʹa/                    comes off

biarwa                         /ꞵʹiarwa/                      to be spread (as sheets)