| Buwal | |
|---|---|
| Gadala | |
| Native to | Cameroon |
| Region | Far North Province |
Native speakers | 10,000 (2004) [1] |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bhs |
| Glottolog | buwa1243 |
Buwal, also known as Ma Buwal, Bual, or Gadala, is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Cameroon in Far North Province in and around Gadala. [1]
| Labial | Alveolar | Lateral alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labialized velar | Labial-velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ŋʷ | ŋm | ||
| Voiceless plosive | p | t | k | kʷ | kp | ||
| Voiced plosive | b | d | ɡ | ɡʷ | ɡb | ||
| Prenasalized plosive | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | ᵑɡʷ | ᵑᵐɡb | ||
| Implosive | ɓ | ɗ | |||||
| Voiceless affricate | ts | ||||||
| Voiced affricate | dz | ||||||
| Prenasalized affricate | ⁿdz | ||||||
| Voiceless fricative | f | s | ɬ | x | xʷ | ||
| Voiced fricative | v | z | ɮ | ɣ | ɣʷ | ||
| Flap | ⱱ | ɾ | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w |
The labiodental flap /ⱱ/ is marginal, only occurring in two native Buwal words. The labial-velar plosives are also marginal; in particular, /kp/ only occurs in one word, the ideophone kpaŋ.
Buwal has the vowels / ə a /, which can occur in high, middle, or low tone. Each vowel has a variety of phonetic realizations. /ə/ can occur as [ i u ɪ ʏ ʊ ], and /a/ can occur as [ e o ɛ œ ɐ ɔ ]. The schwa can be analyzed as a solely epenthetic vowel. These vowels occur as rounded allophones when adjacent to a labialized consonant, and as front vowels when the word is palatalized.
Palatalization in Buwal occurs across an entire word, and also affects the affricate consonants /ts dz ⁿdz/, which surface as [ tʃ dʒ ⁿdʒ ] in a palatalized word. As a result, all of the vowels within a single word are either front or back, producing vowel harmony. An example of this contrast is between [mɐ̄ⁿdʊ́wɐ́n] 'rat' (underlyingly /māⁿdwán/), which is non-palatalized, and [mɛ̀vɛ̄ɗvɛ̄ɗɛ̄ŋ] (underlyingly /màvāɗvāɗāŋ/) 'turtle', which is palatalized. This process does not affect loanwords, e.g. [nɛ̀bɐ̄m] 'oil' (from Fulfulde nebbam) or [lɛ̀kʷól] 'school' (from French l'école). Some loanwords have been modified to accommodate Buwal phonology, e.g. [sɐ́j] 'tea', from Fulfulde sha'i. [2]
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