| Bari | |
|---|---|
| Karo, Kutuk | |
| Spoken in | South Sudan and Uganda |
| Ethnicity | Bari people |
| Native speakers | ca. 750,000 (date missing) |
| Language family | |
| Dialects | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | variously: bfa – Bari keo – Kakwa mqu – Mandari |
Bari is the Nilotic language of the Karo people, spoken over large areas of Central Equatoria state in South Sudan, across the northwest corner of Uganda, and into the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Bari is spoken by several distinct tribes: the Bari people themselves, the Pojulu, Kakwa, Nyangwara, Mundari, and Kuku. Each has their own dialect. The language is therefore sometimes called Karo or Kutuk ('mother tongue') rather than Bari.
Dialects are:
Bari is a tone language. It has vowel harmony, subject–verb–object word order, and agglutinative verbal morphology with some suppletion. A very competent dictionary and grammar were published in the 1930s, but are very difficult to find today. More recently, a dissertation has been published on Bari tonal phonology, and another dissertation on Bari syntax is available.
Contents |
Bari has a cross-height vowel-harmony system.[1]
The Bari alphabet is used by the Bari proper and Kuku in South Sudan. There are four digraphs, 'B, 'D, 'Y and Ny, and the letter eng, Ŋ.
| Uppercase | A | B | 'B | D | 'D | E | G | J | I | Y | 'Y | K | L | M | N | Ŋ | Ny | O | Ö | P | R | S | T | U | W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lowercase | a | b | 'b | d | 'd | e | g | j | i | y | 'y | k | l | m | n | ŋ | ny | o | ö | p | r | s | t | u | w |
| Uppercase | Ŋ | Ö |
|---|---|---|
| Lowercase | ŋ | ö |
| Alternatives | ng | o |
| Uppercase Unicode (hexadecimal) | 014A | 00D6 |
| Lowercase Unicode (hexadecimal) | 014B | 00F6 |
| Unicode Character Code Chart | Latin Extended A | Latin-1 |