Kihavu Lexicon Compilation: Spelling and Basic Grammar

GENERAL CONCLUSION This work deals with Kihavu lexicon and Grammar in the perspective of trying to make a kind of Kihavu wordsbook that one may refer to if ever he tries to think about setting a Kihavu dictionary that does not exist until today. The paper tries to set some spelling rules that have to be observed in reading or writing in Kihavu because we have noticed that Haavu people face problems mainly in writing in Kihavu because there are no established writing rules that may guide them. Another issue is for Haavu diaspora that loses completely the mother tongue once far from the area where they cannot easly be in contac with other Haavu speaking people. It is more horrible for their children beause one may change the place where to live but not his identities. By the way, how to be called a muhavu (a Haavu person) without even utter one haavu word? This puzzling question was observed during elections campaign. Many people came to us claiming to be Bahavu (Haavu people), but they could not happen to make us understand how possible that on may pretend to represent peole he does not know neither the culture nor the language. If we can still remember, the story of Lititi mboka and Omwana w’enkima okulwangali during the massacre at Lubumbashi University, one may understand the great importance of knowing his mother tongue. Since we cannot ask all the Bahavu to come back home to learn the mother tongue, neither cast out them nor ignore their Haavu identity, we tried to think how we can resolve this big problem by providing them with a wordbook; that is why this research was conducted. Apart from the general introduction and the general conclusion, the work is made up of four chapters: The first chapter is divided into two main parts: the first part dealts with the review of literature on languages in general and African languages particularly. The second part dealts with the existing literature on Kihavu. The second chapter dealts with different methods and techniques used to collect and process the data. It has been showed that dispite the other theories used, the interview was the main method of data collection and the categorization for data processing. The third chapter compiles and arranges all the collected words, their grammatical categorization and their English translation..

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A research paper submitted in partialfulfillment of the requirements for the degree of “Licencié” in English Language Teaching
Supervisors: KALEBA WALINGENE Joseph, M.A Senior Lecturer
AMPIRE Espoir Assistant