| South Banda | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo |
Native speakers | (200,000 cited 1996)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:lnl – South Central Bandalna – Langbashe |
| Glottolog | sout2786 |
South Banda is a dialect continuum of the Banda languages spoken by around 200,000 or so people, primarily in the Central African Republic but with ten thousand or so in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (6,000 as of the 1984 census). The two varieties may be mutually intelligible.
Phonology[edit]
Consonants[edit]
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | ||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ||||||
| Plosive/ Affricate |
voiceless | p | t | t͡ʃ | k | k͡p | ʔ | ||
| voiced | b | d | d͡ʒ | ɡ | ɡ͡b | ||||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ⁿd͡ʒ | ᵑɡ | ᵑᵐɡ͡b | ||||
| implosive | ɓ | ɗ | |||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | (χ) | h | |||
| voiced | v | z | ʒ | ʁ | |||||
| Tap | ɽ | ||||||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||||
| Approximant | j | w | |||||||
- /ʁ/ is heard as a voiceless fricative [χ] when occurring after a voiceless consonant.[2]
Vowels[edit]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i ĩ | ɨ | u ũ |
| Close-mid | e | ə | o |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ ɔ̃ | |
| Open | a ã |
References[edit]
- ^ South Central Banda at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Langbashe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required) - ^ Touguele, Samuel (2008). Phonologie et Morphologie de la langue ngbúgù parlée dans la Basse-Kotto en Centrafrique. Université de Yaoundé.