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Maasai belongs to the southern Maa Group of Eastern Nilotic. (Webbook)
Ethnologue lists the classification as: Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic, Nilotic, Eastern, Lotuxo-Teso, Lotuxo-Maa, Ongamo-Maa.
It is spoken by the Maasai on the southern side of the Nairobi-Mombasa Road, in Kajaido, Narok, and Eastern districts in Kenya, and also west of Mount Kilimanjaro along the border in Tanzania. (Webbook)
According to Ethnologue:
Dialect survey work has been carried out under the auspices of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, a group which sponsored a "language and dialect atlas of Kenya" survey from 1973-1977 .... Voegelin and Voegelin (1977) state that Maasai consists of one major dialect and two lesser ones. (Webbook)
According to Ethnologue:
The dialects listed in Tanzania have 82% to 86% lexical similarity with Kenya dialects. In Kenya, Purko has 91% to 96% lexical similarity with other Kenya dialects, 82% with Baraguyu, 86% with Arusha, 77% to 89% with Samburu, 82% to 89% with Chamus, 60% with Ngasa (Ongamo). (Ethnologue)
Maasai is an important regional language. (Webbook)
Literacy rate among Maasai in Kenya (according to Ethnologue):
Ethnologue describes Maasai language use in Tanzania as "vigorous."
There is a standard Maasai orthography. (Webbook) It is Latin-based. It apparently uses at least one extended character - ŋ - the eng. Another version of the orthography also includes ɛ, ɨ, ɔ, and ʉ. (see below)
(Is there any difference in orthographies in Kenya and Tanzania?)
According to Payne & Ole-Kotikash's dictionary, the letters and digraphs of the alphabet are:
a b c d e ɛ g h i ɨ j k l m n ny ŋ o ɔ p r rr s sh t u ʉ w wu y yi
Another webpage shows ɩ (dotless i) instead of ɨ, and ʊ instead of ʉ. See http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~dlpayne/maasai/ATR.htm
According to Omniglot at http://www.omniglot.com/writing/maasai.htm , the letters and digraphs of the alphabet are:
a b c d e g i j k l m mb n nd ng nj ny o p r rr s sh t u w ww y yy
A sample text is shown on the "Language Museum" site: http://www.language-museum.com/encyclopedia/m/maasai.htm
Unicode fonts with appropriate extended Latin ranges would be necessary.
Not aware of any localisation efforts.
Maa (Maasai) Dictionary http://www.uoregon.edu/~dlpayne/Maa%20Lexicon/lexicon/main.htm
Maasai Language Project http://www.uoregon.edu/~dlpayne/maasai/madict.htm
Dwyer, David (1997), Webbook of African Languages, http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html (page on "Maasai," http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Maasai_root.html )
Omniglot, "Maasai (ol-Maa)," http://www.omniglot.com/writing/maasai.htm
Payne, Doris L., and Leonard Ole-Kotikash (2005), "Maa (Maasai) Dictionary," http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~dlpayne/Maa%20Lexicon/lexicon/main.htm
SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Maasai," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=mas
SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp
U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
Wikipedia, "Maasai language," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_language
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