Kanembu_language

Kanembu language

Kanembu language

Nilo-Saharan language of Chad


Kanembu is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Chad by the Kanembu people. It is also spoken by a smaller number of people in Niger. It is closely related to Kanuri.

Quick Facts Native to, Region ...

Phonology

Consonants

More information Labial, Alveolar ...
  • /f, b/ can also have allophones of [ɸ, β].[2]

Vowels

More information Front, Central ...
  • Vowel length is also distributed.

Writing system

Kanembu is written with the Latin script and Ajami alphabets.

In 2009, the Chadian government standardized both Latin and Ajami scripts for all indigenous languages of the country, including Kanembu, in what is known as Chadian National Alphabet.[3][4]

Kanembu Latin alphabet [5][6]
A aB bC cD dE e Ə əF fG gH hI iJ jK k
[a][b][t͡ʃ][d][e][ə][f][g][h][i][d͡ʒ][k]
L lM mN nO oPp R rS sT tU uW wY y
[l][m][n][o][p][r][s][t][u][w][j]

The letters â, ê, î, ô, û are also used. The orthography also uses the digraphs ch, mb, nd, ng, nj.

The Ajami script has been used for Kanembu, since the time of Dunama Dabbalemi, and still today in the Tarjumo language or in religious works.

More information Arabic(Latin) [IPA] ...
More information A, E ...
More information a, e ...

Notes

  1. Kanembu at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
    Old Kanembu at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. Warren-Rothlin, Andy. (2014). West African Scripts and Arabic-Script Orthographies in Socio-Political Context. DOI: 10.1163/9789004256804_013.
  3. Priest, Lorna A.; Hosken, Martin (12 August 2010). Proposal to add Arabic script characters for African and Asian languages (PDF). (Archive)

References


Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Kanembu_language, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.