Kera is an East Chadic language spoken by 45,000 people in Southwest Chad and 6,000 people in North

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...

. It was called "Tuburi" by

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on ...

, a name shared with

Tupuri Tupuri (or Toupouri) is a language mostly spoken in the Mayo-Kebbi Est Region of southern Chad and in small parts of northern Cameroon. It is an Mbum language spoken by the Tupuri people with approximately 300,000 speakers. Tupuri was erroneou ...

. In Cameroon, Kera is spoken by small, isolated and scattered groups in the southern departments of

Mayo-Danay Mayo-Danay is a department of Far North Province, Cameroon. The department covers an area of 5,303 km and at the 2005 Census had a total population of 529,061. The capital of the department is at Yagoua. Subdivisions The department is divid ...

(

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commune) and

Diamaré Diamaré is a department of Far North (''Extreme-Nord'') Province in Cameroon. The department covers an area of 4,665 km and at the 2005 Census had a total population of 642,227. The capital of the department is at Maroua. Subdivisions T ...

(

Ndoukoula Ndoukoula is a town and commune in Cameroon. See also *Communes of Cameroon The Arrondissements of Cameroon are the third-level units of administration in Cameroon. The arrondissements are organised by divisions and sub divisions of each prov ...

district) in the Far North Region. It is mainly spoken in Chad. In Cameroon, the main group is near the border, south of Viri. There are about 6,000 speakers in Cameroon.

Grammar

Kera is a subject–verb–object language, using prepositions. It uses exclusively borderline case-marking.

Phonology

The phonetic symbols and charts used are from the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

(IPA)

Consonants

Vowels
ATR allophones or undershoot in Kera? Retrieved 2019-06-02.

Kera's vowels are, including

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

s: But can also be expressed as: * High The tongue is positioned near the top of the mouth. * Round The lips are rounded while the vowel is pronounced. * Front The tongue is positioned at the front of the mouth. Kera has

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an 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 typically long distance, mea ...

. In Kera, many words are required to only have vowels in the high or not high vowel class. For example, a word may have any of the vowels i ə u or any of the vowels e a o, but words containing both, e.g. words with i and o, are prohibited.

References

External links

Research on stress in Kera
Languages of Cameroon Languages of Chad East Chadic languages {{Cameroon-lang-stub