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