1 Loanwords in Iraqw, a Cushitic language of Tanzania Maarten Mous and Martha Qorro 1. The language and its speakers Iraqw is spoken in northern Tanzania, on the high plateau between Lake Manyara and Lake Eyasi by roughly half a million speakers. It is the largest Southern Cushitic language and its closest relatives are Gorwaa, Alagwa, and Burunge which by contrast have each about fifteen thousand speakers or less. These four languages form the southernmost group of Cushitic, a language family that extends north to the Sudanese- Egyptian border. Most languages in the family are spoken in Ethiopia. The geographical variation within Iraqw is negligible. Swahili, the official and national language of Tanzania, is a second language for the vast majority of Iraqw speakers. Swahili is used in dealings with the administration, in school, and in writing. Iraqw is used in all other domains, and occasionally in formal domains as well. Protestant churches use Iraqw more than Catholic churches; very few Iraqw are Muslim. Iraqw is hardly used in written communication. The written material available in Iraqw is religious in nature (the Bible); in addition some stories, riddles, and other specimens of the rich Iraqw verbal art are available in writing. The language has been expanding rapidly in recent history, not only because of the relative high fertility rate, but also because the Iraqw can be characterized as an immigrant society in the sense that outsiders are welcomed but expected to become Iraqw. In particular, an important number of Datooga have become Iraqw when they opted for a more sedentary farming lifestyle and gave up their Southern Nilotic language in the process. Iraqw is a dominant regional language. Iraqw is surrounded by speakers of languages of different language phyla (see map): Hadza (an isolate click language), Mbugwe (Bantu, Niger-Congo), and Datooga (Southern Nilotic, Nilo-Saharan). This helps the identification of loan words. To the north, there are the Maasai (Eastern Nilotic), with whom there is little contact. However, the fear of Maasai aggression is still recounted in Iraqw oral history. To the west are the Mbugwe, a Bantu-speaking people who were once rich in cattle. There is trade with the Mbugwe who are famous for their basketry and pots. A visit from Iraqw