Ikwere language
| Ikwere | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation: | [ìkʷéré] | |
| Spoken in: | Nigeria | |
| Total speakers: | >980,000 | |
| Language family: | Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Volta-Congo Benue-Congo Igboid Ikwere |
|
| Writing system: | Latin alphabet | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | nic | |
| ISO 639-3: | ikw | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Ikwere (or Ikwerre, Ikwerri) is an Igboid language spoken by over 980,000 people (according to the 1991 census) in Nigeria. Ikwerre is one of the major languages spoken in Rivers State of Nigeria.
Phonology
Vowels
Ikwere distinguishes vowels by quality (frontedness and height), the presence or absence of nasalization, and the presence or absence of advanced tongue root.
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| High | +ATR | i ĩ | u ũ |
| −ATR | ɪ ɪ̃ | ʊ ʊ̃ | |
| Mid | +ATR | e ẽ | o õ |
| −ATR | ɛ ɛ̃ | ɔ ɔ̃ | |
| Low | −ATR | a ã | |
There is also a vowel /ə̃/, which may be realized as [ɨ̃] or a syllabic nasal whose articulation is determined by adjacent consonants.
Vowel harmony
Ikwere exhibits two kinds of vowel harmony:
- Every vowel in an Ikwere word, with a few exceptions, agrees with the other vowels in the word as to the presence or absence of advanced tongue root.
- Vowels of the same height in adjacent syllables must all be either front or back, i.e. the pairs /i/ & /u/, /ɪ/ & /ʊ/, /e/ & /o/, and /ɛ/ & /ɔ/ cannot occur in adjacent syllables. Vowels of different heights, however, need not match for frontness/backness either. This doesn't apply to the first vowel in nouns beginning with a vowel or with /ɾ/, and doesn't apply to onomatopoeic words.
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Postalveolar or palatal |
Velar | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | ||||||
| Explosive stop or affricate |
Voiceless | p | t | tʃ | k | kʷ | |||
| Voiced | b | d | dʒ | ɡ | ɡʷ | ||||
| Fricative | Voiceless | f | s | h | hʷ | ||||
| Voiced | v | z | |||||||
| Nonexplosive stop | Voiced | ḅ | |||||||
| Glottalized | ʼḅ | ||||||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||||
| Tap | ɾ | ||||||||
| Approximant | j | ɰ | w | ||||||
The tap /ɾ/ may sometimes be realized as an approximant [ɹ].
/ḅ ʼḅ l ɾ j ɰ w h hʷ/ are realized as [m ʼm n ɾ̃ j̃ ɰ̃ w̃ h̃ h̃ʷ], respectively, preceding a nasal vowel.
Tone
Ikwere is a tonal language.
References
- Clements, George N.; Osu, Sylvester (2005). "Nasal harmony in Ikwere, a language with no phonemic nasal consonants". Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 26: 165–200.
- Williamson, Kay (1970). Reading and writing Ikwerre. Ibadan: Institute of African Studies.
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
