Bari is the

Nilotic language The Nilotic languages are a group of related languages spoken across a wide area between South Sudan and Tanzania by the Nilotic peoples. Etymology The word Nilotic means of or relating to the Nile River or to the Nile region of Africa. Dem ...

of the Karo people, spoken over large areas of

Central Equatoria Central Equatoria is a state in South Sudan. With an area of , it is the smallest of the original South Sudanese states. Its previous name was Bahr al-Jabal (also Bahr-el-Jebel), named after a tributary of the White Nile that flows through the s ...

state in

South Sudan South Sudan (; din, Paguot Thudän), officially the Republic of South Sudan ( din, Paankɔc Cuëny Thudän), is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the C ...

, across the northwest corner of

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territor ...

, and into the

Democratic Republic of 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 ...

. Bari is spoken by several distinct tribes: the

Bari people The Bari are a tribe of Karo, Nilotic people inhabiting South Sudan. The Bari speak the Bari language as a mother tongue, which belongs to the Nilotic family. Overview The Bari of the Nile are sedentary agro-pastoralist. They exploit the s ...

themselves, the Pojulu, Kakwa,

Nyangwara The Nyangwara are an ethnic group numbering between 25,000 and 30,000 people living in the South Sudan South Sudan (; din, Paguot Thudän), officially the Republic of South Sudan ( din, Paankɔc Cuëny Thudän), is a landlocked country in ...

, Mundari, and Kuku. Each has its own dialect. The language is therefore sometimes called Karo or Kutuk ('mother tongue') rather than ''Bari''. Bari is a

tone language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...

. It has

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...

, subject–verb–object word order, and agglutinative verbal morphology with some suppletion. A very competent dictionary and grammar were published in the 1930s, but are very difficult to find today. More recently, a dissertation has been published on Bari tonal phonology, and another dissertation on Bari syntax is available.

Dialects

Dialects are: * Bari proper (Beri) * Pöjulu (Pajulu, Fadjulu, Fajelu, Madi) * Kakwa (Kakua, Kwakwak) adio broadcasts in Uganda* Nyangbara (Nyangwara, Nyambara) * Mandari (Mondari, Mundari, Chir, Kir, Shir) * Kuku * Nyepu (Nyefu, Nyepo, Nypho, Ngyepu) * Ligo (Liggo)

Phonology

Bari has a cross-height vowel-harmony system.SIL Bibliography: Yokwe and Hall 1981
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Orthography

The Bari alphabet is used by the Bari and Kuku in

. There are four digraphs, 'B, 'D, 'Y and Ny, and the letter eng, Ŋ.

References

General References

# ''Bari Language, Sudan Primer: Sillabari Ko Kutuk Na Bari''. The Catholic Press Institute. Juba, Sudan. # Owen, R.C.R.
Bari grammar and vocabulary
'' 1908. OCLC: 25040516 # Spagnolo, Lorenzo M. ''Bari grammar.'' 1933. Verona, Missioni Africane.. OCLC: 34898784 # Yokwe, Eluzai. ''The tonal grammar of Bari.'' Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1987.

External links

The Book of Common Prayer in Bari (1953) * https://web.archive.org/web/20090215100524/http://www.openroad.net.au/languages/african/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Bari Language Agglutinative languages Eastern Nilotic languages Latin alphabets Languages of South Sudan Languages of Uganda Vowel-harmony languages