Tetela (Otetela, Kitetela, Kikitatela), also ''Sungu'', is a

Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for National ...

language of northern Kasai-Oriental Province,

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. It is spoken by the

Tetela people The Tetela people (or Batetela in the plural) are an ethnic group of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, most of whom speak the Tetela language. Description The Batetela live in the region between Lusambo and the Upper Congo River, in the prov ...

Noun classes

Like other

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages. The t ...

, Tetela

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes (counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system), with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of them. ::

References

Relevant literature

* Elysee Meta Okubo. 2016. ''A COLLECTION OF 100 TETELA PROVERBS.'
Proverb website
* Mukanga, Ndjeka Elizabeth, Empenge Albert Shefu, Ambaye Albertine Tshefu. 2020. ''Great Collection of Tetela Proverbs on the African Wisdom''. Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishers. 83 proverbs, 107 pages Tetela languages Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo {{Bantu-lang-stub