The Lendu language is a
Central Sudanic
Central Sudanic is a family of about sixty languages that have been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family. Central Sudanic languages are spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Congo (DRC), Nige ...
language spoken by the Balendru, an ethno-linguistic agriculturalist group residing in eastern
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...
in the area west and northwest of
Lake Albert, specifically the
Ituri Province. It is one of the most populous of the
Central Sudanic languages
Central Sudanic is a family of about sixty languages that have been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family. Central Sudanic languages are spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Congo (DRC), N ...
. There are three-quarters of a million Lendu speakers in the DRC. A conflict between the Lendu and the
Hema was the basis of the
Ituri conflict.
Besides the Balendru, Lendu is spoken as a native language by a portion of the Hema,
Alur, and
Okebu. In
Uganda
Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It 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 ...
, the Lendu tribe live in the districts of
Nebbi and
Zombo districts, northwest of Lake Albert.
Names
''Ethnologue'' gives ''Bbadha'' as an alternate name of Lendu, but
Blench (2000) lists ''Badha'' as a distinct language. A draft listing of Nilo-Saharan languages
available from his websiteand dated 2012, lists ''Lendu/Badha''.
Phonology
Vowels
Consonants
* is mainly heard as an allophone of when preceding velar consonants.
Implosives
Demolin (1995) posits that Lendu has
voiceless implosives, (). However, Goyvaerts (1988) had described these as
creaky-voiced implosives , as in
Hausa, contrasting with a series of modally voiced implosives as in
Kalabari, and Ladefoged judges that this seems to be a more accurate description.
References
* Kutsch-Lojenga, Constance. 1989. ''The Secret behind Vowelless Syllables in Lendu''. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 11. 115–126. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter.
* Tucker, Archibald N. 1940. ''Lendu''. In The Eastern Sudanic Languages: Volume I, 380–418. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
* Trifkovic, Mirjana. 1977. ''Tone preserving vowel reduction in Lendu''. Studies in African Linguistics 8. 121–125.
*
{{Authority control
Central Sudanic languages
Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo