Maasai Language 101 (Enkutuk olMaasai 101)

Since we've been getting lots of questions about pronunciation & word usage, we thought we'd post some tutorials... First of all, we can't really explain the complete pronunciation because it is tonal, but we'll try to give you an overview.

1. All consonants are pronounced as we know them normally. "ng" can either be -ng as in sing or n & hard g sounds.

2. All vowels (except a) have 2 sounds (open & closed- we have yet to figure out which sounds are considered open by the Maasai...) Most of the sounds are pure/round sounds (no southern drawl please)
a = [a] or for those who don't know IPA [a] = ah
e = [e] ay, as in play (no diphthong)
e = [E] eh, as in bleh
i = [i] ee, as in fleet
i = [I] ih, as in flip
o = [o] oh, as in go
o = [u] ooh, as in goop
u = [u] ooh, glue
u = [υ] uh, as in good or yuck, a cross between the two

3. Multiple vowels in a row makes more of the same sound. Example: aataraposhe. (lengthen the ah sound at the beginning of the word) or nchooki [n-cho-oki] there isn't the ooh sound we're used to in English or itiii ( long [i] or ee sound at end)

4. All verbs start with a.

5. All nouns that start with en are feminine. All nouns that start with ol are masculine. All nouns that start with i are plural. Everything has to match within the sentence. Luckily, the words actually follow this pattern. There are very few words that don't start with either en, ol or i.

This brings us to the end of Enkutuk OlMaasai 101. Olesere (goodbye)