Koromfé | |
---|---|
Native to | Burkina Faso, Mali |
Native speakers | 200,000 (2001) [1] |
Niger–Congo?
| |
Dialects |
|
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | kfz |
Glottolog | koro1298 |
Koromfé is a Gur language spoken in a U-shaped area around the town of Djibo, in the north of Burkina Faso and southeastern Mali, bordering Dogon Country.
The Koromfé language is spoken in the provinces of Bam and Sanmatenga in the Centre-Nord Region, in the Provinces of Loroum and Yatenga (Titao Subdistrict) in the Nord Region and in the Soum Province of the Sahel Region (Djibo–Aribinda Subdistrict).
Koromfé has two dialects: The western dialect (also known as Koromba or Kurumba) and the eastern dialect (Fulse or Folse). There are two major dialect areas, most conveniently termed East and West. The traditional centre of the Eastern area is Aribinda and of the Western area Pobé-Mengao. The western area is also known as Lorom (with two short close mid vowels), which should not be confused with the recently created province of Loroum centred on Titao. (Titao is ethnically Kurumba.) The grammar of Rennison (1997) describes the Western dialect.
Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||
Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ||
voiced | b | d | ɡ | |||
Fricative | voiceless | f | s | h | ||
voiced | v | z | ||||
Approximant | w | l | j | |||
Rhotic | r |
The alveolar flap [ɾ] is an allophone of /d/, which occurs as [d] only word-initially and after nasal consonants. There also exists a spirantised allophone of /ɡ/, i.e. [ɣ]; phonetic [ɡ] only occurs word-initially, after a nasal consonant, or between two ATR high vowels. Before nasal vowels the approximants /j/ and /w/ are nasalised, and the nasalised /j/ in slow, careful speech can even harden to [ɲ]. However, there is no phonemic palatal series of consonants in Koromfe.
The vowel system comprises 5 [-ATR] vowels /ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ/ and their [+ATR] counterparts /i e ʌ o u/. All vowels occur both orally and (context-free) nasally, and long and short, giving 40 full vowels. There is also a schwa [ə] which alternates with zero and disappears in faster, casual speech.
Koromfe is the only Gur language, and one of only five Niger-Congo languages, listed in the World Atlas of Language Structures that is not tonal. [2]
Koromfé has no written form.[ citation needed ] A 2007 dictionary uses a IPA based orthography with "y" replacing "j". [3]
In phonology, an allophone is one of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive and the aspirated form are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Thai. On the other hand, in Spanish, and are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English.
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and [b], pronounced with the lips; and [d], pronounced with the front of the tongue; and [g], pronounced with the back of the tongue;, pronounced in the throat;, [v], and, pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and, which have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Contrasting with consonants are vowels.
Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic-Congo languages, and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid, Niger-Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area. It is generally considered to be the world's largest language family in terms of the number of distinct languages, just ahead of Austronesian, although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language; the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by Ethnologue is 1,540.
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in English are, and, in words such as nose, bring and mouth. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages. There are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages.
Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead. Uvular affricates can certainly be made but are rare: they occur in some southern High-German dialects, as well as in a few African and Native American languages. Uvular consonants are typically incompatible with advanced tongue root, and they often cause retraction of neighboring vowels.
Hindko is a cover term for a diverse group of Lahnda dialects spoken by several million people of various ethnic backgrounds in several areas in northwestern Pakistan, primarily in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northwestern regions of Punjab.
The phonology of Portuguese varies among dialects, in extreme cases leading to some difficulties in intelligibility. Portuguese is a pluricentric language and has some of the most diverse sound variations in any language. This article on phonology focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language—and differences between European Portuguese (EP), Brazilian Portuguese (BP), and Angolan Portuguese (AP) can be considerable—varieties are distinguished whenever necessary.
Edo, colloquially called Bini (Benin), is a language spoken in Edo State, Nigeria. It is the native language of the Edo people and was the primary language of the Benin Empire and its predecessor, Igodomigodo.
Kusaal is a Gur language spoken primarily in northern eastern Ghana, and Burkina Faso. It is spoken by about 121,000 people and takes its name from the Kusaal people, or Kusasi. There is a distinctive dialect division between Agole, to the East of the Volta River, and Toende, to the West. Agole has more speakers. The 6-district capital; Bawku West with Zebilla as capital and the rest; Binduri, Bawku, Tempane, Garu and Pusiga districts mostly Agole dialect speakers. The complete Bible translation is in the Agole dialect.
Guéré (Gere), also called Wè (Wee), is a Kru language spoken by over 300,000 people in the Dix-Huit Montagnes and Moyen-Cavally regions of Ivory Coast.
The phonology of Bengali, like that of its neighbouring Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, is characterised by a wide variety of diphthongs and inherent back vowels.
Komo is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken by the Kwama (Komo) people of Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan. It is a member of the Koman languages. The language is also referred to as Madiin, Koma, South Koma, Central Koma, Gokwom and Hayahaya. Many individuals from Komo are multilingual because they are in close proximity to Mao, Kwama and Oromo speakers. Komo is closely related to Kwama, a language spoken by a group who live in the same region of Ethiopia and who also identify themselves as ethnically Komo. Some Komo and Kwama speakers recognize the distinction between the two languages and culture, whereas some people see it as one "ethnolinguistic" community. The 2007 Ethiopian census makes no mention of Kwama, and for this reason its estimate of 8,000 Komo speakers may be inaccurate. An older estimate from 1971 places the number of Komo speakers in Ethiopia at 1,500. The Komo language is greatly understudied; more information is being revealed as researchers are discovering more data about other languages within the Koman family.
Kaluli is a language spoken in Papua New Guinea. It is a developing language with 3,100 speakers. Some people refer to this language as Bosavi, however the people themselves refer to the language as Kaluli. There are four dialects, Ologo, Kaluli, Walulu, and Kugenesi. The differences between the dialects are not clear. Their writing system uses the Latin script. Kaluli belongs to the Trans-New Guinea language family. Kaluli was first analyzed by Murray Rule in 1964 who wrote a preliminary phonological and morphological analysis. A dictionary of Kaluli has been compiled by Schieffelin and Feld (1998).
Kensiu (Kensiw) is an Austro-asiatic language of the Jahaic subbranch. It is spoken by a small community of 300 in Yala Province in southern Thailand and also reportedly by a community of approximately 300 speakers in Western Malaysia in Perak and Kedah States. Speakers of this language are Negritos who are known as the Mani people or Maniq of Thailand.
This article discusses the phonology of the Inuit languages. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Inuktitut dialects of Canada.
Konkani is a southern Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-European family of languages spoken in the Konkan coastal region of India. It has approximately 3.6 million speakers.
Tampuan is the language of Tampuan people indigenous to the mountainous regions of Ratanakiri Province in Cambodia. As of the 2008 census there were 31,000 speakers, which amounts to 21% of the province's population. It is closely related to Bahnar and Alak, the three of which form the Central Bahnaric language grouping within the Mon-Khmer language family according to traditional classification. Sidwell's more recent classification groups Tampuan on an equal level with Bahnar and the South Bahnaric languages in a larger Central Bahnar group. The Tampuan language has no native writing. EMU International began linguistic research in 1995 and produced an alphabet using Khmer letters. The alphabet was further refined by linguists from International Cooperation for Cambodia (ICC) and the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport (MOEYS). The modified Khmer script was approved by MOEYS in 2003 for use in bilingual education programs for Tampuan implemented by ICC, UNESCO, and CARE.
Awankari is an Indo-Aryan dialect of Pakistan. Classified as a dialect of Hindko, and hence of Lahnda, it is spoken mostly in parts of Chakwal District in the north-west of the province of Punjab.
In the sociolinguistics of the English language, raising or short-a raising is a phenomenon by which the "short a" vowel, the TRAP/BATH vowel, is pronounced with a raising of the tongue. In most American and many Canadian English accents, raising is specifically tensing: a combination of greater raising, fronting, lengthening, and gliding that occurs only in certain words or environments. The most common context for tensing throughout North American English, regardless of dialect, is when this vowel appears before a nasal consonant.
Eastern Bengali, Baṅgālī or Vaṅga is a nonstandard dialect cluster of Bengali language spoken in most of Bangladesh and Tripura, thus covering majority of the land of Bengal and surrounding areas.