Ganza language

Ganza
غانزاGanzo
Native to	Sudan, Ethiopia
Region	Asosa Zone of Benishangul-Gumuz Region, Blue Nile State
Native speakers	3,000 (2007) [1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Omotic North Mao Ganza
Language codes
ISO 639-3	gza
Glottolog	ganz1246
ELP	Ganza

Ganza, also known as Ganzo or Koma, is an Omotic language of the Afro-Asiatic family spoken in the Al Kurumik District of the Blue Nile (state) in Sudan and in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia, specifically in the village districts of Penishuba and Yabeldigis.

It also goes by the names Ganzo, Gwami, Koma, and Koma-Ganza. ^[1]

Phonology

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ŋ	ʔ̃
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		k	ʔ
	ejective	pʼ	tʼ		kʼ
	voiced	b	d		ɡ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʃ		h
	ejective		sʼ
	voiced		z
Approximant			l	j	w
Trill			r

Ganza does not utilize consonant length phonemically. ^{[2] : 106}

Vowels ^{[2] : 107}

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e	o
Open	a

Although vowel length is typically contrastive in Omotic languages, Ganza does not have a clear contrast between long and short vowel phonemes. Instead, Ganza has predictable utterance-final vowel lengthening and a set of monosyllabic words with double vowels. ^{[2] : 109}

References

• Smolders, Joshua. 2015. A Wordlist of Ganza. Addis Ababa: SIL Ethiopia

Notes

1. Ganza at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. Smolders, Joshua (2016). "A Phonology of Ganza" (pdf). Linguistic Discovery. 14 (1): 86–144. doi: 10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.470 . Retrieved 2017-01-16.

External links

• Link to ELAR documentation of Ganza and Ganza verb mophology Archived 2020-09-19 at the Wayback Machine