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Niellim
The Niellim language (autonym ''lwaà'') is a Bua language spoken by some 5,000 people (as of 1993) along the Chari River in southern Chad. It is mainly spoken in two areas: one around the city of Sarh (to which many - perhaps most - speakers have migrated) and one, its traditional home, further north, between about 9°30′ and 9°50′ N, corresponding to the former chiefdoms of Pra, Niellim, and Niou. Niellim borders on several languages of diverse families – in particular Sara, Ndam, and Laal – and is influenced by the local ''lingua franca'', Baguirmi; it has itself strongly influenced Laal, but also apparently has been influenced by Laal, or a relative of Laal, since much of the common Laal–Niellim vocabulary is not Bua. It is notably homogeneous. As a small minority in Chad, its speakers usually have to learn other languages, mostly (as of 1974) Baguirmi, Sara, Arabic, and Bua. Phonology The consonants are: The vowels are , and as well as the diphthon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bua Languages
The Bua languages are a subgroup of the Mbum–Day subgroup of the Savanna languages spoken by fewer than 30,000 people in southern Chad in an area stretching roughly between the Chari River and the Guéra Massif. They were labeled "G13" in Joseph Greenberg's Adamawa language-family proposal. They are ultimately part of the Niger–Congo family, and have exerted a significant influence on Laal. Bua languages have had extensive contact with Chadic languages. Languages The Bua languages include: * Bua language (7,708 speakers in 1993), north of the Chari River around Korbol and Gabil (after which the group was named); mutually comprehensible with Fanian. * Fanian, or Mana, or Kobe (> 1,100 speakers in 1997), in the villages of Mouraye, Sengué, Malakonjo, Rim, Sisi, Karo west of Lake Iro. * Niellim or Lua (5,157 speakers in 1993), spoken around Niellim and Niou along the Chari River north of Sarh (including the extinct Chini dialect) * Tunia (2,255 speakers in 1993), arou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Niellim
The Niellim language (autonym ''lwaà'') is a Bua language spoken by some 5,000 people (as of 1993) along the Chari River in southern Chad. It is mainly spoken in two areas: one around the city of Sarh (to which many - perhaps most - speakers have migrated) and one, its traditional home, further north, between about 9°30′ and 9°50′ N, corresponding to the former chiefdoms of Pra, Niellim, and Niou. Niellim borders on several languages of diverse families – in particular Sara, Ndam, and Laal – and is influenced by the local ''lingua franca'', Baguirmi; it has itself strongly influenced Laal, but also apparently has been influenced by Laal, or a relative of Laal, since much of the common Laal–Niellim vocabulary is not Bua. It is notably homogeneous. As a small minority in Chad, its speakers usually have to learn other languages, mostly (as of 1974) Baguirmi, Sara, Arabic, and Bua. Phonology The consonants are: The vowels are , and as well as the diphthon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laal Language
Laal is an endangered language isolate spoken by 749 people () in three villages in the Moyen-Chari prefecture of Chad on opposite banks of the Chari River, called Gori (''lá''), Damtar (''ɓual''), and Mailao. It represents an isolated survival of an earlier language group of Central Africa. It is unwritten except in transcription by linguists. According to former Summer Institute of Linguistics-Chad member David Faris, it is in danger of extinction, with most people under 25 shifting to the locally more widespread Bagirmi. This language first came to the attention of academic linguists in 1977 through Pascal Boyeldieu's fieldwork in 1975 and 1978. His fieldwork was based, for the most part, on a single speaker, Djouam Kadi of Damtar. Speakers and status The language's speakers are mainly river fishermen and farmers, who also sell salt extracted from the ashes of doum palms and ''Vossia cuspidata''. Like their neighbours, the Niellim, they were formerly cattle herders but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bua Language
The Bua language (also called Ba) is spoken north of the Chari River around Korbol and Gabil in Chad. In 1993 it was spoken by some 8,000 people. It is the largest member of the small Bua languages, Bua group of languages and is mutually comprehensible with Fanian language, Fanian. Kawãwãy (Korom) may be a dialect or a distinct language. Bua is a local lingua franca in Korbol Canton, due to the historical influence of the Korbol Caliphate since the late 1700s and 1800s. Speakers also live around Gabil (in the Guéra Region), and in Sarh and N'Djaména. Korom Korom is spoken by about 60 people in 3 or 4 villages in Moyen-Chari Region and Guéra Region of Chad. The main community of speakers is called Kawãwãy, who comprise a community of blacksmiths in Tili Nugar (Tilé Nougar), a Fania language, Fania village. The language has been documented by Florian Lionnet and R. Hoinathy in 2014 and 2017. Lionnet considers Korom to be separate language closely related to Bua.Lionnet, Flo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chad
Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon to the southwest, Nigeria to the southwest (at Lake Chad), and Niger to the west. Chad has a population of 16 million, of which 1.6 million live in the capital and largest city of N'Djamena. Chad has several regions: a desert zone in the north, an arid Sahelian belt in the centre and a more fertile Sudanian Savanna zone in the south. Lake Chad, after which the country is named, is the second-largest wetland in Africa. Chad's official languages are Arabic and French. It is home to over 200 different ethnic and linguistic groups. Islam (55.1%) and Christianity (41.1%) are the main religions practiced in Chad. Beginning in the 7th millennium BC, human populations moved into the Chadian basin in great numbe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voicelessness
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies voicing and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation. The International Phonetic Alphabet has distinct letters for many voiceless and modally voiced pairs of consonants (the obstruents), such as . Also, there are diacritics for voicelessness, and , which is used for letters with a descender. Diacritics are typically used with letters for prototypically voiced sounds, such as vowels and sonorant consonants: . In Russian use of the IPA, the voicing diacritic may be turned for voicelessness, e.g. . Voiceless vowels and other sonorants Sonorants are sounds such as vowels and nasals that are voiced in most of the world's languages. However, in some languages sonorants may be voiceless, usually allophonically. For example, the Japanese w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts: *Voicing can refer to the ''articulatory process'' in which the vocal folds vibrate, its primary use in phonetics to describe phones, which are particular speech sounds. *It can also refer to a classification of speech sounds that tend to be associated with vocal cord vibration but may not actually be voiced at the articulatory level. That is the term's primary use in phonology: to describe phonemes; while in phonetics its primary use is to describe phones. For example, voicing accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters "s" and "z". The two sounds are transcribed as and to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronunciations, depe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prenasalized Consonant
Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather than clusters as in English ''finger'' or ''member'', lies in their behaviour; however, there may also be phonetic correlates which distinguish prenasalized consonants from clusters. Because of the additional difficulty in both articulation and timing, prenasalized fricatives and sonorants are not as common as prenasalized stops or affricates, and the presence of the former implies the latter. In most languages, when a prenasalized consonant is described as "voiceless", it is only the oral portion that is voiceless, and the nasal portion is modally voiced. Thus, a language may have "voiced" and "voiceless" . However, in some Southern Min (including Taiwanese) dialects, voiced consonants are preceded by voiceless prenasalization: . Yeyi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Implosive Consonant
Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.''Phonetics for communication disorders.'' Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller. Routledge, 2005. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward in addition to expelling air from the lungs. Therefore, unlike the purely glottalic ejective consonants, implosives can be modified by phonation. Contrastive implosives are found in approximately 13% of the world's languages. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, implosives are indicated by modifying the top of a letter (voiced stop) with a rightward-facing hook: . Articulation During the occlusion of the stop, pulling the glottis downward rarefies the air in the vocal tract. The stop is then released. In languages whose implosives are particularly salient, that may result in air rushing into the mouth before it flows out again with the next vowel. To ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nasal Consonant
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. Definition Nearly all nasal consonants are nasal occlusives, in which air escapes through the nose but not through the mouth, as it is blocked (occluded) by the lips or tongue. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound. Rarely, non-occlusive consonants may be nasalized. Most nasals are voiced, and in fact, the nasal sounds and are among the most common sounds cross-linguistically. Voiceless nasals occur in a few languages such as Burmese, Welsh, Icelandic and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fricative Consonant
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German (the final consonant of ''Bach''); or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh (appearing twice in the name ''Llanelli''). This turbulent airflow is called frication. A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants. When forming a sibilant, one still is forcing air through a narrow channel, but in addition, the tongue is curled lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of the teeth. English , , , and are examples of sibilants. The usage of two other terms is less standardized: "Spirant" is an older term for fricatives used by some American and European phoneticians and phonologists. "Strident" could mean just "sibilant", but some authors include also labiodental and uvular fricatives in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottal Consonant
Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have, while some do not consider them to be consonants at all. However, glottal consonants behave as typical consonants in many languages. For example, in Literary Arabic, most words are formed from a root ''C-C-C'' consisting of three consonants, which are inserted into templates such as or . The glottal consonants and can occupy any of the three root consonant slots, just like "normal" consonants such as or . The glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet are as follows: Characteristics In many languages, the "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis ( phonation) without a specific place of articulation, and may behave as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |