Bench (language)
| Bench (Bentʂ 4 -non 4 ) | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Ethiopia | |
| speaker | around 174,000 native speakers (as of 1998) | |
| Linguistic classification |
||
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
|
| ISO 639 -2 |
afa |
|
| ISO 639-3 |
bcq |
|
Bench ( Bencnon , also Gimira , which is perceived as pejorative ) is a northern omotic language of the Gimojan subgroup and is used by around 174,000 people (as of 1998) in the Bench Maji Zone of the region of the southern nations, nationalities and peoples , in southern Ethiopia talked about the cities of Mizan Teferi and Shewa Gimira .
It has three mutually understandable dialects: actual Bench, She and Mer. Unlike the other languages in the area, it knows six tones .
Phonology
The bench has the following consonant system :
| Bilabial | Coronal | Palatoalveolar | Retroflexes | Velare | Glottal | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosives | p | b | pʹ | t | d | tʹ | k | ɡ | kʹ | ʔ | ||||
| Affricates | ʦ | ʦʹ | ʧ | ʧʹ | tʂ | tʂʹ | ||||||||
| Fricative | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | ʂ | ʐ | H | |||||||
| Half vowels | j | |||||||||||||
| Nasals | m | n | ||||||||||||
| Liquid | l, r | |||||||||||||
They can all appear palatalized , but only before a , which is why ya can also be seen as the sixth vowel sound. Labialized consonants (+ w ) are used for p , b , s , g , and ʔ , but their phonetic status is unclear; they only appear after / i /.
The phoneme / p / has two unconditional allophones , [ph] and [f]; / j / has the allophone [w] in front of trailing vowels.
The vowels of the bench are a , e , i , o , u .
There are six tones, five of which are labeled 1 through 5, starting with the lowest. The sixth is a rising tone from 2 to 3.
The syllable structure is (C) V (C) (C) (C) + tone or (C) N (C), where C stands for any consonant, V for any vowel and N for any nasal. CC groups consist of a continuous sound , followed by a plosive , fricative or an affricate ; in CCC groups the first consonant must be / r /, / y /, / m /, / p / or / p '/, the second either / n / or an unvoiced fricative and the third / t / or / k / .
literature
- M. Lionel Bender: Comparative morphology of the Omotic languages . LINCOM Europe, Munich 2000.
- Klaus Wedekind: Gimo-Jan or Ben-Yem-Om: Benč-Yemsa phonemes, tones, and words . In: Richard J. Hayward (Ed.): Omotic Language Studies . SOAS, University of London, 1990, pp. 68-184.