Turka (Turuka) or Curama (Cuuramã, Tchourama, Tyurama), is a

Gur language The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur or Mabia, belong to the Niger–Congo languages. They are spoken in the Sahelian and savanna regions of West Africa, namely: in most areas of Burkina Faso, and in south-central Mali, northeastern ...

which is spoken by the

Turka people The Turka are an ethnic group in Burkina Faso. They are part of the Gur people and speak the Turka language ("tuz"), a Gur language The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur or Mabia, belong to the Niger–Congo languages. They are spoke ...

in southwest

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the ...

. Its closest linguistic relative is the Cerma language: however, they are not

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

. Due to economic, religious and educational influence, many Turka people also speak

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

and Jula.

Writing system

Nasalization is indicated with a tilde on the vowel : . The tones are indicated using diacritics on the vowels or the syllabic nasals, with the acute accent for the high tone and the grave accent for the low tone.

References

Gur languages Languages of Burkina Faso {{gur-lang-stub