Mono is a language spoken by about 65,000 peopleEthnologue report for Mono
/ref> in the northwestern corner of the

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 one of the

Banda languages Banda is a family of Ubangian languages spoken by the Banda people of Central Africa. Banda languages are distributed in the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan. Languages Olson (1996) Olson (1996) classif ...

, a subbranch of the Ubangian branch of the

Niger–Congo languages Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic-Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of ...

. It has five dialects: Bili, Bubanda, Mpaka, Galaba, and Kaga. Mono has 33

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

phonemes, including three labial-velar stops (, , and prenasalized ), an asymmetrical eight-

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

system, and a

labiodental flap In phonetics, the voiced labiodental flap is a speech sound found primarily in languages of Central Africa, such as Kera and Mangbetu. It has also been reported in the Austronesian language Sika. It is one of the few non- rhotic flaps. The ...

(allophonically a

bilabial flap The voiced bilabial flap is an uncommon non- rhotic flap. It is usually, and perhaps always, an allophone of the labiodental flap, though it is the preferred allophone in a minority of languages such as Banda and some of its neighbors. In Mono ...

) that contrasts with both and . It is a

tonal 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 ...

Phonology

Tones in Mono: high, low, mediumOlson, Kenneth S. 2004

References

*Kamanda-Kola, Roger. 2003. ''Phonologie et morpho-syntaxe du mono: Langue oubanguienne du Congo R.D.'' (LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics 60). Munich: LINCOM EUROPA. * *Olson, Kenneth S. 2005. ''The phonology of Mono'' (SIL International and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics 140). Dallas: SIL & UTA. *Olson, Kenneth S. & Brian E. Schrag. 2000. 'An overview of Mono phonology'. In H. Ekkehard Wolff & Orin Gensler (eds.), ''Proceedings from the 2nd World Congress of African Linguistics, Leipzig 1997'', 393–409. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.

External links

SIL article
on new phonetic symbol for labiodental flap Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Banda languages {{Ubangian-lang-stub