A copy of a metadata entry, such as from: Description : The Akie of Tanzania are a traditional hunter-gatherer society whose language is seriously endangered. The language, presumably a member of the Kalenjin branch of the Southern Nilotic languages, is still actively spoken in three villages of northeastern Tanzania, but the majority language and culture in the Akie-speaking area is Maa (speaking the Maasai dialect), which belongs to the Eastern Nilotic branch of the Nilotic family. The total number of Akie people is estimated at roughly 2500 people, but the number of people still speaking the language is presumably below 200. The massive impact of Maa language, culture, and life style plus the increasing influence of Bantu languages, including Swahili, the national language of Tanzania, contribute to a rapid erosion of the linguistic and ethnic identity of the Akie, as the people themselves are well aware. The present project aims at documenting the Akie language, which is virtually unknown. The project will involve two core researchers, the principal applicant (PA) being Karsten Legère, Universität Wien, and the co-applicant (CA) Christa König, Universität Frankfurt. Both have extensive experience of language documentation in East Africa, and both have contributed to the documentation of endangered African languages in Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia. Whereas the PA has contributed mainly to the documentation of Tanzanian Bantu languages, the PA has contributed to the description of the Maa language (which was the topic of her M.A. and Ph.D. dissertations). In addition, the project will involve intensive cooperation with and participation of colleagues in East Africa, mostly of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. This participation will involve such domains as linguistics, history, sociology, and musicology. Finally, the project will also involve a Ph.D. student of the University of Dar es Salaam, and a number of Tanzanian field assistants, most of them being Akie people. At the center of documentation work will be the (manual, audio, and video) recording of texts of different genres, conversations, folktales, fables, songs, oral traditions, proverbs, riddles, etc..A second component of field research will be devoted to lexical documentation of semantic fields, in particular of kinship terms, body parts, material culture and artifacts, traditional economy (hunting and gathering), toponyms, greetings, etc. Various special documentation studies within the project will deal with the intimate interaction of Akie people as hunter-gatherers with nature (bees and gathering honey, plant names and uses), gender based issues (food and its preparation, child care and traditional medicine, initiation rites). Furthermore, the project will aim at devising a practical orthography of the Akie language and at preparing a bilingual Akie – Maa dictionary. The original Akie texts to be collected will be edited and translated into the national language Swahili. The project is designed for a three-years’ period. In the first and the second year, both the PA and the CA will be carrying out field research in the Akie-speaking area, while field work is restricted to a shorter research visit to Tanzania. Include as much information about your submission as possible. It will be helpful for other users interested in the associated language(s).