KROGER2021-001 - lexical attestation
Vusungvuung, the mason-wasp roarer
Builsa (Sandema) districts, Upper East Region, northern Ghana - West Africa
Play / practical
vusungvuung
Source term: vusungvuung; bull-roarer
vusungvuung (pl. vusungvuunta): the potter or mason wasp, and the bullroarer.
In Buli, the language of the Bulsa of northern Ghana, the bullroarer and the mason wasp share one name: vusungvuung. The wasp builds its nursery of clay, and that clay, smeared on the forehead, cures a headache. The roarer belongs to children, a slip of wood whirled overhead on a string, or in recent times a piece of sawblade. The verb for swinging it, yuling, also names a solemn act: a thing is circled three times for a man and four for a woman before it is set in its place, as the undertaker circles the pot that will cover a grave.
Biika a yuling ka vusungvuung.
The child is swinging (rotating) a bull-roarer.
Franz Kröger, Buli–English Dictionary (2021), s.v. vusungvuung
- Object
- A piece of wood on a string; in recent times a sawblade is used instead.
- Function
- A children's plaything, swung overhead.
- Source
- Franz Kröger (comp.), Buli–English Dictionary (Webonary, SIL International, 2021), s.v. vusungvuung (sense 2) and yuling; after Kröger, Buli-English Dictionary (Münster/Hamburg, 1992)
- Source location
Page references
s.v. vusungvuung; s.v. yuling
- Source confidence
- high
- Location note
- Sandema, chief town of the Bulsa (Builsa) area; the dictionary gives no locality for the word, so the dot stands for the language community. Glottolog buli1254 (10.576, -1.267) lies about 18 km south.
Regions: Africa · West Africa
- Toy / secular survival