Masaba language

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Masaba
Lumasaba
Spoken in: Uganda 
Region: Eastern, south of the Kupsabiny, Bugisu Province
Total speakers: 750,000
Language family: Niger-Congo
 Atlantic-Congo
  Volta-Congo
   Benue-Congo
    Bantoid
     Southern Bantoid
      Narrow Bantu
       Central
        J
         Masaba-Luyia (J.30)
          Masaba
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: bnt
ISO 639-3: myx

Masaba, (Lumasaaba) sometimes Lugisu, after one of its dialects, is a Bantu language spoken by about 750,000 people in eastern Uganda in the administrative region of Bugisu on the border to Kenya. The language is closely related to, and mutually intelligible with Bukusu, spoken in western Kenya. Its speakers, formerly known as the Bagisu, prefer to be called Bamasaba. Masaba is the local name of Mount Elgon. Like other Bantu languages, Masaba has a large set of prefixes used as noun classifiers. This is similar to how gender is used in many Germanic and Romance languages, except that instead of the usual two or three, there is around eighteen different noun classes, most of them rather only generally defined. The language is tonal and has a quite complex verb morphology.

Contents

[edit] Sounds

[edit] Consonants

Bilabial Labio-
dental
Alveolar Palatal Velar
Plosives p b t d k g
Nasals m n ŋ
Fricatives β f s z
Approximant j
Lateral l

[edit] Vowels

Masaba has a basic 5-vowel system consisting of /i, e, a, o, u/.

[edit] References

  • Brown, Gillian (1972) Phonological Rules and Dialectal Variation: A study of the phonology of Lumasaaba ISBN 0-521-08485-7

[edit] External links

Languages