Nyole (also LoNyole, Lunyole, Nyuli) is a Bantu language spoken by the
Banyole in
Butaleja District,
Uganda
}), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The sou ...
. There is 61% lexical similarity with a related but different
Nyole language in Kenya.
Phonology
Consonants
Nyole has series of voiceless, voiced, and
prenasalized
Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather ...
stops. is
labio-velar.
Vowels
Historical changes
Nyole has an interesting development from
Proto
Proto or PROTO may refer to:
Language
* Proto-, an English prefix meaning "first"
Media
* ''Proto'' (magazine), an American science magazine
* Radio Proto in Cyprus
Music
* ''Proto'' (Holly Herndon album), 2019
* ''Proto'' (Leo O'Kelly ...
-Bantu *p → Nyole . Schadeberg (1989) connects this
sound change to
rhinoglottophilia, where the sound change developed first as → → . Then, given the acoustic similarity of and
breathy voice
Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like ...
to
nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
In the Internation ...
, the sound change progressed as → → . The velar place of articulation development is due to velar nasals being the least perceptible of the nasals and its marginal status in (pre-)Nyole and other Bantu languages. In closely related neighboring languages, *p developed variously into or or was deleted.
This historical development results in so-called "crazy" alternations, like resulting in as in the following:
: n-ŋuliira ("hear" stem form) : puliira "I hear"
: n-ŋumula ("rest" stem form) : pumula "I rest"
In the above two words, when the first person singular subject prefix is added to the stem starting with , the initial consonant surfaces as . In other forms (like "to hear" and "to rest"), the original stem-initial can be seen.
Writing System
See also
*
Luhya language
Luhya (; also Luyia, Luhia or Luhiya) is a Bantu language of western Kenya.
Dialects
The various Luhya tribes speak several related languages and dialects, though some of them are no closer to each other than they are to neighboring non-Luhya l ...
References
* Eastman, Carol M. (1972). Lunyole of the Bamenya, ''JAL'', ''11'' (3), 63-78.
* Morris, H. F. (1963). A note on Lunyole. ''Uganda Journal'', ''27'', 127-134.
* Schadeberg, Thilo C. (1989). The velar nasal in Nyole (E. 35). ''Annales Aequatoria'', ''10'', 169-179.
Available online.
{{Authority control
Languages of Uganda
Luhya language