Tera language
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| Tera | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Nigeria | |
| Total speakers: | ~100,620 | |
| Language family: | Afro-Asiatic Chadic Biu-Mandara A A.1 Western Tera |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | afa | |
| ISO 639-3: | ttr | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Tera is a Chadic language spoken in north-eastern Nigeria in the north and eastern parts of Gombe State and Borno State.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Phonology
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal or postalveolar |
Velar | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Palatalized | Central | Lateral | Plain | Labialized | ||||
| Nasal | m | mʲ | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||
| Stop | Voiceless1 | p | t2 | tʃ2 | k | kʷ | |||
| Voiced | b | d2 | dʒ2 | g | gʷ | ||||
| Prenasalized | mb | nd | ɲdʒ | ŋg | ŋgʷ | ||||
| Implosive | ɓ | ɓʲ | ɗ | ɠ | |||||
| Fricative | Voiceless | f | s | ɬ | ʃ | x | xʷ | h3 | |
| Voiced | v | vʲ | z | ɮ | ʒ | ɣ | ɣʷ | ||
| Trill | r | ||||||||
| Approximant | Plain | l | j | w | |||||
| Glottalized | jˀ4 | ||||||||
- Voiceless plosives are lightly aspirated but unreleased before another consonant.[3]
- /t/ and /d/ formally had /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ respectively as allophones but the two pairs have split; however, the alveolar plosives never precede front vowels and the postalveolar affricates rarely precede anything but front vowels.[4]
- /h/ is a relatively new phoneme, appearing in loanwords from English and Hausa.[5]
- /jˀ/ derives from a /ɗʲ/ that has lost its alveolar contact while retaining the palatal and glottal action.[6]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | ɨ | u uː |
| Mid | e eː | o oː | |
| Low | a aː |
Vowel length contrasts are neutralized in monosyllabic words with no coda consonants.[8]
All vowels but /a/ and /aː/ are more open in closed syllables. such as in [ɮɛp] ('to plait') and [xʊ́r] ('to cook soup'). /a/ and /aː/ is more open when following palatalized consonants.[9]
Diphthongs, which have the same length as long vowels, consist of a non-high vowel and a high vowel:[10]
| Diphthong | Example | Orthography | Gloss |
|---|---|---|---|
| /eu/ | /ɓeu/ | ɓeu | 'sour' |
| /au/ | /ɮàu/ | dlau | 'sickle' |
| /ai/ | /ɣài/ | ghai | 'town' |
| /oi/ | /woi/ | woi | 'child' |
[edit] Tone
Tera is a tonal language, distinguishing high, mid and low tone. Tone is not indicated orthographically since no minimal trios exist; minimal pairs can be distinguished by context.[11]
[edit] Orthography
The first publication in Tera was Labar Mbarkandu nu Yohanna Bula Ki, a translation of the Gospel of John, which established an orthographic system. In 2004, this orthographic system was revised.[12]
[edit] References
- ^ Tench (2007:227)
- ^ Tench (2007:228)
- ^ Tench (2007:229)
- ^ Tench (2007:229)
- ^ Tench (2007:229)
- ^ Tench (2007:229)
- ^ Tench (2007:230)
- ^ Tench (2007:230)
- ^ Tench (2007:231)
- ^ Tench (2007:231)
- ^ Tench (2007:232)
- ^ Tench (2007:227)
[edit] Bibliography
- Paul, Tench (2007), "Tera", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37 (1): 228-234
