Izere is a
dialect continuum of
Plateau languages in
Nigeria. According to Blench (2008), it is four languages, though ''Ethnologue'' does not distinguish NW and NE Izere. The Cen and Ganang varieties are spoken by only 2000 each. Cen has added
Berom noun-class prefixes and consonant alternation to an Izere base.
Dialects
Blench (2019) lists the following Izere dialects.
*Fobur
*Northeastern (Federe)
*Southern (Foron)
*Ichèn
*Faishang
*Ganang
Phonology
The Izere phonetic inventory includes 29 consonants and seven vowels and distinguishes three tone levels; two additional contour tones appear only rarely, in loanwords and due to
onomatopoeia.
Consonants
The consonant
phonemes of Izere are shown in the following table.
Vowels
The vowel phonemes of Izere are shown in the following table.
Tonemes
There are three level (L, M & H) and two contour
tonemes
Tone is the use of pitch (music), pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflection, inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic infor ...
(LM & HL) in Izere; the latter two are found only in loanwords and onomatopoeia.
References
*Blench (2008
''Prospecting proto-Plateau'' Manuscript.
External links
{{Platoid languages
Central Plateau languages
Languages of Nigeria