XXX Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 19–21 июня 2019 г. Т. 1

Секция IX 410 XXX Международный Конгресс по источниковедению и историог рафии стран Азии и Африки The online Oxford English Dictionaries offer the following information 1 : Definition  of  harambee — (in East Africa) an event held to raise funds for a charitable purpose... Swahili , literally ‘pulling or working together.’ Origin Swahili, literally ‘pulling or working together’(a slogan of the first independent government of Kenya). Pronunciation harambee /həˈrambiː / The above statement from the Oxford Dictionaries Online contains one point that needs to be challenged. The Swahili slogan standardly written as harambee is not normally pronounced as / həˈrambiː / , but as / haramˈbeː / . The pronunciation / həˈrambiː / seems to come froma highly anglicised informant. This is suggested by the use of /ə/ (schwa), by the shifting of stress from the final syllable to the medial syllable and especially by the interpretation of the final ee as / i: / rather than / e: / . A double e in Swahili represents a lengthened e , not a shift to the letter i . If an English speaker sees a foreign expression Harambee , she/he is inclined to interpret it as Harambii . In fact, the Swahili expression would be more likely to be adequately pronounced in English if it were spelt * Harambay or * Harambey . English speakers have a handicap when they find ee and oo in other languages. This handicap resulted from a ‘Great Vowel Shift’which occurred between the time of Chaucer in 1400 and the time of Shakespeare in 1600. Since that time, English speakers have intended to misinterpret ee as ii (and also oo as uu ) when they find them in other languages. My preferred solution would be never to use ee and oo in writing systems for languages such as Nubian. Even such a well established language as Swahili is still subject to misinterpretation when observed by a speaker of English. Sabbar did find a Nubian equivalent to the Harambee of Swahili. I have a copy of it written in his own hand as follows: If people were moving a boat, they grasped the rope with the first two syllables ‘Heela’ and pulled together when they shouted ‘ Hóp ’. Sabbar’s acute accent above Hóp could have indicated both high tone and stress. To avoid English misconceptions, I would replace ee with ey as follows: Heyla-hóp! 1 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/harambee (accessed 19 May 2019).