| Budu | |
|---|---|
| Ɨbʉdhʉ | |
| Native to | Democratic Republic of the Congo |
| Region | Orientale Province |
| Ethnicity | Budu |
Native speakers | (180,000 cited 1991)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | buu |
| Glottolog | budu1250 |
D.332[2] | |
Budu (Ɨbʉdhʉ) is a Bantu language spoken by the Budu people in the Wamba Territory in the Orientale Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its orthography uses the special characters ɨ, ʉ, ɛ and ɔ, as well as modifier letters colon ꞉ and equal sign ꞊ for grammatical tone, marking past and future tense, respectively.
A variety of this language is called Matta and is spoken locally both north and south of Maboma.
Phonology[edit]
Consonants[edit]
| Labial | Alveolar | (Alveolo-) palatal |
Velar | Labio- velar |
Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c | k | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | |||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᶮɟ | ᵑɡ | |||
| implosive | ɓ | ɗ | ʄ | ||||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡ɕ | k͡p | ||||
| voiced | d͡ʑ | ɡ͡b | |||||
| prenasal | ᶮd͡ʑ | ᵑᵐɡ͡b | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | h | |||
| voiced | v | z | |||||
| prenasal | ᶬv | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ||||
| Approximant | (l) | j | w | ||||
- [z] only occurs in the Koya dialect of Budu.
- /h/ can be heard as either a voiced [ɦ] or voiceless [h] among different speakers.[3]
- /ɗ/ can be heard as [l] or a tap [ɾ] in free variation.[4]
Vowels[edit]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Near-close | ɪ | ʊ | |
| Close-mid | e | o | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
Notes[edit]
- ^ Budu at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
- ^ Koehler, Loren S. (1995). An Underspecification Approach To Budu Vowel Harmony. Ann Arbor: UMI.
- ^ Lojenga, Constance K. (1994). Kibudu: A Bantu Language with nine Vowels. Africana Linguistica XI: Tervuren. pp. 127–133.
| National | |
|---|---|
| Other | |
