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3.2.6 Moru 3.2.6.1 Background
3.2.6.1.1 Geography, demography, and administration
Moru is spoken in the Mundri district of the Equatoria Province in southern Sudan. The population in 1982 was estimated at 70,000 Grimes 1988:314. This was said to
include 1200 Agyi, 2500 Andri, 5000 Kadiro, 9000 Miza and 400 Wadi; there is no explanation of what dialects are spoken by the other estimated 52,000 Moru
Tucker’s figures suggest that Miza constituted at least one-third of the population at the time he surveyed; probably 70 of the Moru were either Miza or Kadiro, 15-20
Andri, and less than 10 Bariba.
3.2.6.1.2 History not reported 3.2.6.2 Lexical Similarity among Moru Dialects
Here we reproduce the matrix of cognate percentages for the seven Moru dialects surveyed already presented in 3.1.1.2, including the margin of error based on 161-
165 items:
Moru-Kädiro 100±0.0 Moru-Lakamadi
99±1.4 100±0.0 Moru-Miza 96±2.8 98±2.0
97±2.5 Moru-Ägyi
91±4.3 93±3.8 93±3.8 95±3.2 Moru-Ändri
92±4.1 93±3.8 93±3.8 96±2.9 99±1.4 Moru-Bäribä
83±5.9 85±5.6 84±5.7 86±5.3 85±5.6 86±5.4 Moru-Wadi
There is a small amount of chaining. Kädiro, Lakamadi, and Miza have nearly identical lexicon, as do Ändri and Bäribä. The one exception in both cases is on item
138 ‘all’, where Kädiro and Lakamadi have one word while Lakamadi, Miza, and Bäribä have another word, and Ändri has yet another. Wadi probably has less similar
vocabulary to any of the other dialects than one finds between even the two most dissimilar among them.
Virtually the same picture emerges from the ‘ratio of degrees of difference’ matrix:
Moru-Kädiro 4 Moru-Lakamadi
6 5 Moru-Miza 15 15 14 Moru-Ägyi
18 19 19 20 Moru-Ändri 15 17 17 18 6 Moru-Bäribä
25 26 25 15 28 28 Moru-Wadi
64 The most remarkable fact in this matrix is the unexpected relative similarity of
Wadi to Ägyi. The phonetic similarity of the other groupings of dialects which were 99-100 similar on the lexical level for our sample is also clear.
3.2.6.3 Grammatical Similarity among Moru Dialects
Nothing is known about variations in grammar among the Moru dialects.
3.2.6.4 Intelligibility among Moru Dialects
A Moru translator says that he can understand speakers form all over Moru-land and uses his own Miza dialect to address them. However, it is not demonstrated that all
Moru people can understand all other Moru speakers, or that they understand different dialects equally well. The key question, given that Miza is the present reference
dialect, is whether all Moru including the Wadi can read the Miza dialect, providing it is properly written.
3.2.6.5 Bilingualism and Sociolinguistic dynamics among Moru
Nothing is known about proficiency in other languages, language use patterns, or language attitudes among Moru people.
4. RECOMMENDATIONS
Concerning the Moru-Madi cluster as a whole, the first question is whether it is desirable to vigorously encourage convergence among all the Moru-Madi languages.
In a word, no, for the following reasons: - There are several viable dialect clusters already in the process of being developed
separately. - Languages of wider communication are already in place, and these meet most present
communication needs. - Most important, no government, church or educational institution, nor the people
themselves, are interested in promoting a single Moru-Madi speech variety. This is not to say that convergence should not be encouraged at all. If in the course
of language change and through the process of language development, convergence can be incidentally encouraged, this should be done, since reducing unnecessary variation
among written materials helps the language development task to be easier and more focused. However, it does not seem desirable to undertake a program to actively
promote convergence; the effort on the part of the language development agents and the inconvenience to readers would not be justified by the apparent savings derived
from producing fewer kinds of literature including ‘coverage’ of the chain with a smaller number of Scripture translations.
Still, principles of standardization should not be ignored by those working on the various projects. We believe that cooperation is still a good thing, and ideally, the
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