Maasai Lesson #6: Online Resource Activity – Color and Design

WELCOME to lesson #6! Today we will learn some basic color and design terms in Maa. Similar to lesson #5 on Time and Weather Conditions, this lesson will allow you to navigate spaces and describe the space around you. Excellent job on your language learning so far — keep up the good work!

First, let’s spend some time familiarizing ourselves with the terms below. Please take your time on this step. We will doing an activity later with this information. 🙂

Second, now that we have spent some time on the above terms, let’s continue expanding our repertoire. This table contains color and design terms which are derived from other Maa words whose primary meaning refers to an object or action.  The color and design senses develop as the object/action words are used to refer to characteristics or resultant states typical of the object/action.  This is a very common process in all languages.

In English, for example, the word peach is most basically the name of a type of fruit (i.e., the name of an object).  But peach can also name the color of a dress or the ink in a pen which is similar to the typical color of this fruit.

It is the same process that accounts for the root in olowuarú ‘carniverous beast’ also being used to mean ‘light red-brown color with camouflaging effect’.

Let’s spend some time familiarizing ourselves with these terms below. Please take your time on this step. We will doing an activity later with this information. 🙂 

Third, let’s do an activity with these terms! Drag and drop the Maa terms that match with their English description. Enjoy!

ONLINE RESOURCES

• Fuchs, Stephanie. 2018. “An Introduction to Maa – the language of the Maasai and the Samburu People”.
• Website. https://africageographic.com/stories/an-introduction-to-maa-language-maasai-samburu-people/. Accessed 06/15/21.
  • This website provides some basic words that may help a beginner Maa learner collect vocabulary for their arsenal.
• Maasai Culture and History: Understanding the Soul of East Africa
• Website: https://www.zegrahm.com/blog/maasai-culture-history-understanding-soul-east-africa
  • This website provides some basic information about Maasai culture, history, clothing, songs, dances, body modifications, and more!

• Payne, Doris. 2008. Maa Language Project.
• Website. https://pages.uoregon.edu/maasai/. Accessed 06/15/21.
  • This platform by scholars at the university of Oregon is a user friendly website with several chapters/ pages for a beginner Maa learner to expose themself to the language. There is a link for a Maa dictionary in this platform, which, I am sure will prove very helpful for beginner learners. There are also chapters that outline who Maa people are, where they are from, what they do, where the language originated and other interesting context that might help a language learner be more successful in their acquisition.