Ikwere language

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Ikwere
Pronunciation:	IPA: [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. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Ikwere (or Ikwerre, Ikwerri) is an Igboid language spoken by over 980,000 people (according to the 1991 census) in Nigeria. Ikwerre is the major language spoken in Rivers State of Nigeria.

Contents 1 Phonology 1.1 Vowels 1.1.1 Vowel harmony 1.2 Consonants 1.3 Tone 2 References 3 External links

[edit] Phonology

[edit] 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.

[edit] Vowel harmony

Ikwere exhibits two kinds of vowel harmony:

1. 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.
2. 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Tone

Ikwere is a tonal language.

[edit] 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. 

[edit] External links

• Ethnologue report for language code:ikw