The Bilen language (ብሊና ''b(ɨ)lina'' or ብሊን ''b(ɨ)lin'') is spoken by the

Bilen people The Bilen (also variously transcribed as Blin, and also formerly known as the Bogo, Bogos or North Agaw) are a Cushitic ethnic group in the Eritrea. They are primarily concentrated in central Eritrea, in and around the city of Keren and further s ...

in and around the city of Keren in

Eritrea Eritrea ( ; ti, ኤርትራ, Ertra, ; ar, إرتريا, ʾIritriyā), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopi ...

. It is the only Agaw (Central Cushitic) language spoken in

. It is spoken by about 120,000 people.

Spelling of the name

"Blin" is the English spelling preferred by native speakers, but Bilin and Bilen are also commonly used. ''Bilin'' is the reference name arbitrarily used in the current initial English editions of ISO 639-3, but ''Blin'' is also listed as an equivalent name without preference. In the English list of ISO 639-2, ''Blin'' is listed in first position in both English and French lists, when ''Bilin'' is listed as an alternate name in the English list, and Bilen is the alternate name in the French list. The ''Ethnologue'' report lists Bilen as the preferred name, but also ''Bogo, Bogos, Bilayn, Bilin, Balen, Beleni, Belen, Bilein, Bileno, North Agaw'' as alternative names.

Phonology

It is not clear if Bilen has tone. It may have

pitch accent A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ...

(Fallon 2004) as prominent syllables always have a high tone, but not all words have such a syllable.

Vowels

Consonants

Note: is found in loans, and the status of as a

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

is uncertain. /r/ is typically realised as a tap when it is medial and a trill when it is in final position. Fallon (2001, 2004) notes intervocalic

lenition In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language at a pa ...

, such as → ; syncope, as in the name of the language, → ;

debuccalization Debuccalization or deoralization is a sound change or alternation in which an oral consonant loses its original place of articulation and moves it to the glottis (usually , , or ). The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspir ...

with secondary articulation preserved, as in → 'mud for bricks'. Intriguingly, the ejectives have voiced allophones, which according to Fallon (2004) "provides an important empirical precedent" for one of the more criticized aspects of the

glottalic theory The glottalic theory is that Proto-Indo-European had ejective stops, , instead of the plain voiced ones, as hypothesized by the usual Proto-Indo-European phonological reconstructions. A forerunner of the theory was proposed by the Danish lingu ...

of Indo-European. For example,

Writing system

Ge'ez abugida

A writing system for Bilen was first developed by missionaries who used the Ge'ez abugida and the first text was published in 1882. Although the Ge'ez script is usually used for

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...

, the phonemes of Bilen are very similar (7 vowels, labiovelar and ejective consonants). The script therefore requires only a slight modification (the addition of consonants for and ) to make it suitable for Bilen. Some of the additional symbols required to write Bilen with this script are in the "Ethiopic Extended"

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

range rather than the "Ethiopic" range.

Latin alphabet

In 1985 the Eritrean People's Liberation Front decided to use the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

for Bilen and all other non-Semitic languages in Eritrea. This was largely a political decision: the Ge'ez script is associated with

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global popula ...

because of its liturgical use. The Latin alphabet is seen as being more neutral and secular. In 1993 the government set up a committee to standardize the Bilen language and the Latin-based orthography. "This overturned a 110-year tradition of writing Blin in Ethiopic script." (Fallon, ''Bilen Orthography'' ) As of 1997, the alphabetic order was: :e, u, i, a, é, o, b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z, ñ, ñw, th, ch, sh, kh, kw, hw, qw, gw. Also ''khw''. Their values are similar to the IPA apart from the following:

References

Consonant Mutation and Reduplication in Blin Singulars and PluralsLanguage, Education, and Public Policy in Eritrea
* * *

External links

Online Blin language tutorial