Lendu language

The Lendu language is a Central Sudanic language spoken by the Balendru, an ethno-linguistic agriculturalist group residing in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo in the area west and northwest of Lake Albert, specifically the Ituri Region of Orientale Province. It is one of the most populous of the Central Sudanic languages. There are three-quarters of a million Lendu speakers in the DRC. A conflict between the Lendu and Hema people was the basis of the Ituri conflict.

Lendu
Balendru
Native toCongo (DRC)
EthnicityLendu, Hema, Alur, Okebu
Native speakers
(760,000, including Ndrulo cited 1996)[1]
Dialects
  • Badha
Language codes
ISO 639-3led
Glottologlend1245
Linguasphere03-BAD

Besides the Balendru themselves, Lendu is spoken as a native language by a portion of the Hema, Alur, and Okebu.

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 website and dated 2012, lists Lendu/Badha.

Phonology

Demolin (1995)[2] posits that Lendu has voiceless implosives, /ɓ̥ ɗ̥ ɠ̊/ (/ƥ ƭ ƙ/). However, Goyvaerts (1988)[3] had described these as creaky-voiced implosives /ɓ̰ ɗ̰ ɠ̰/, as in Hausa, contrasting with a series of modally voiced implosives /ɓ ɗ ɠ/ as in Kalabari, and Ladefoged judges that this seems to be a more accurate description.[4]

References
  1. Lendu at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Demolin, Didier. 1995. The phonetics and phonology of glottalized consonants in Lendu. In Connell, Bruce and Arvaniti, Amalia (eds.), Phonology and Phonetic Evidence. Papers in Laboratory Phonology IV, 368-385. Cambridge Univ. Press.
  3. Goyvaerts, Didier L. 1988. Glottalized Consonants a New Dimension. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 3. 97-102. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  4. Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 87–89. ISBN 978-0-631-19815-4.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.