Vidunda (G38) as an Endangered Language

Tanzania is a multi-ethnic and, as a consequence, multi-lingual country. This fact is reflected in the existence of approximately 120 ethnonyms according to the 1967 population census (Tanzania 1971). The most recent edition of Ethnologue (Gordon 2005) lists 128 languages (of which one is extinct) and glossonyms accordingly. This number recently grew even bigger when the results of a country-wide survey under the auspices of LoT1 were released (LoT 2006). Thus, the survey added approximately 80 more glossonyms to the existing lists published by, for example, Polomé & Hill (1980) and Ethnologue. As known, many glossonyms refer to language varieties which are mutually intelligible with those spoken mainly by neighboring ethnic groups or nationalities. People who claim to speak a language of their own frequently understand that of their neighbors, although the latter’s variety is terminologically distinct from the former.2 Hence, the high number of glossonyms is linguistically not relevant for adequately describing the factual situation, which is often characterized by a dialect continuum. In other words, dialect clusters which are comprised of “languages ” (as expressed by particular glossonyms) may definitely reduce the number of Tanzanian languages. However, to which number a necessary linguistic and terminological recategorization may ultimately lead is still an open question