A sociolinguistic survey of Sichela speech community

This survey was conducted in order to obtain information concerning the Sichela speech community and their language variety. The Sichela people live in southwestern Tanzania, south of Lake Rukwa. This group is largely undocumented in the existing literature. Therefore, it was decided that the SIL Tanzania Language Assessment Team undertake an investigation to clarify the status of the Sichela as an ethnic group as well as their language variety.

It is suggested in this report that the Sichela would be able to use written material produced in the neighbouring Wanda language. They could potentially participate in a Wanda language development project, which could share resources in a cluster project with Nyamwanga. The Sichela should be considered when developing Wanda orthography in order to make the Wanda translation as accessible to the Sichela as possible.