A Dialect Survey of the Rangi Language Communities in Kondoa District, Tanzania

1.Acknowledgements 4 2.The organization of this paper 4 3.Introduction and Background 4 3.1 Introduction 4 3.2 Background 5 Rangi History 5 Language classification 7 Language area 7 Language use 8 Population 9 4.Research Goals of Dialect Survey Report 9 5. Research Methodology 9 5.1 Research Locations 9 5.2 Research Tools and Implementation 11 Group interview 11 Worldlist 11 Phraselist 12 Observation 12 6.Dialect Identification 12 6.1 Dialect and Accent 12 6.2Perceived differences between the speech varieties 13 6.3 Actual differences between the speech varieties 26 Pronunciation 26 Consonants 26 Vowels 28 Tone 29 Patterns in pronunciation 30 Lexical differences 30 Grammatical differences 35 Imbrication 36 Causative plus perfective 36 Present continuous 37 Negative marker 38 Tense-aspect system 38 7. Factors that would impact the choice of a Reference Dialect 41 7.1Perceived comprehension between speech varieties 41 7.2Commonality of speech 41 8. Summary and Conclusions 42 8.1 Dialect identification 42 8.2 Orthography 43 8.3 Final summary statement 44