Urhobo

Urhobo
Spoken in	Delta State ( Nigeria )
speaker	500,000 (1990)
Linguistic ; classification	Niger-Congo Atlantic – Congo Volta – Niger Sm-Yeai Edoid languages South west; ; ; ; Urhobo ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	urh

The Urhobo is an edoid language and is spoken by the Urhobo people. The Urhobo make up the majority of the population in the Delta State in southern Nigeria . Urhobo is one of the Benue-Congo languages , one of the groups of Niger-Congo languages .

Phonology

Compared to the Proto-Edoid, the Urhobo has a greatly reduced system of seven vowels that form two harmonic groups: / ieaou / and / i ɛ a ɔ u / .

In Urhobo, a consonant inventory that is relatively conservative for an edoid language has developed. The language has three nasal and only five oral consonants, / ɺ, l, ʋ, j, w / , which have nasal allophones in front of the nasal vowels.

literature

Frank Kügler, Caroline Féry, Ruben Van De Vijver (2009) Variation and Gradience in Phonetics and Phonology

Web links

Urhobo world

Individual evidence

^ Archangeli & Pulleyblank, 1994. Grounded phonology , pp. 181 ff

[1] Archangeli & Pulleyblank, 1994. Grounded phonology , pp. 181 ff

	labial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labiovelar	Glottal
nasal	m		n	ɲ
Plosive	p b		t d	c ɟ	k ɡ	k͡p ɡ͡b
Fricative	ɸ	f v	s z	ɕ ʑ	ɣ		H
Vibrant			r̝
Flap			ɺ [ɾ̃]
Approximant		ʋ [ʋ̃]	l [n]	j [ɲ]		w [ŋʷ]