The Obituary
Kw’adza was a South Cushitic language of the Bahi district in central Tanzania, spoken by a small community that shared odd scraps of vocabulary — a word for beer, some numerals — only with its equally isolated neighbour Asa, the sign of an old contact across the Tanzanian interior that has since unravelled completely.
The decline reads in three numbers: about 600 speakers in thirty households in 1908, two by 1974 in the single town of Bankolo, then none. No last speaker’s name was written down. The language is placed as gone somewhere between the late 1970s and the 1990s, its grammar never fully recorded, its people shifted to Gogo.
Worth remembering
- It shared a few words — including one for beer — only with the isolated Asa language, a trace of old contact in the Tanzanian interior.
- Its speakers fell from about 600 in 1908 to just two by 1974 before the language went silent.
Sources
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.