Guere language

Guéré

Wè

Spoken in Ivory Coast

Region Dix-Huit Montagnes, Moyen-Cavally

Native speakers 317,000 (1998–1999)

Language family

Niger–Congo

Atlantic–Congo
- Kru
  - Western Kru
    - Wee
      - Guere–Krahn
        
        Guéré

Language codes

ISO 639-3 either:
gxx – Central Gere (Southern Wee)
wec – Neyo (Western Wee)

This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Guéré (Gere), also called Wè (Wee), is a Kru language spoken by over 300,000 people in the Dix-Huit Montagnes and Moyen-Cavally regions of Ivory Coast.

1 Phonology
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

Phonology

The phonology of Guere (here the Zagna dialect of Central Guere / Southern Wè)^[1] is briefly sketched out below.

Consonants

The consonant phonemes are as follows:

	Bilabial		Labiodental		Labial-velar		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Labialized velar
Stops	p	b			k͡p	ɡ͡b	t	d	c	ɟ	k	ɡ	kʷ	ɡʷ
Implosives		ɓ
Nasals		m						n		ɲ
Fricatives			f	v			s	z
Lateral approximant								l
Approximants										j				w

Allophones of some of these phonemes include:

[k͡m] is an allophone of /k͡p/ before nasal vowels
[ŋ͡m] is an allophone of /ɡ͡b/ before nasal vowels
[ŋʷ] is an allophone of /w/ before nasal vowels
[ɗ] is an allophone of /l/ in word-initial position
[r] is an allophone of /l/ after a coronal consonant (alveolar or palatal)

In addition, while the nasal consonants /m, n/ and contrast with /ɓ/ and /l/ before oral vowels, and are thus separate phonemes, before nasal vowels only the nasal consonants occur. /ɓ/ and /l/ do not occur before nasal vowels, suggesting that historically a phonemic merger between these sounds and the nasals /m, n/ may have occurred in this position.

Vowels

Like many West African languages, Guere makes use of a contrast between vowels with advanced tongue root and those with retracted tongue root. In addition, nasal vowels contrast phonemically with oral vowels.

	Oral		Nasal
	Front	Back	Front	Back
Close (ATR)	i	u	ĩ	ũ
Close (RTR)	ɪ	ʊ	ɪ̃	ʊ̃
Mid (ATR)	e	o		õ
Mid (RTR)	ɛ	ɔ	ɛ̃	ɔ̃
Open (RTR)		a		ã

Tones

Guere is a tonal language and contrasts ten tones:

Tone	IPA	Example	Gloss
Low	˩	ɡ͡ba˩	"to scatter"
Mid	˧	ɡ͡ba˧	"to destroy"
High	˦	mɛ˦	"to die"
Top	˥	ji˥	"full"
Low–high rising	˩˦	ɡ͡bla˩˦	"hat"
Low–top rising	˩˥	k͡plɔ̃˩˥	"banana"
Mid–high rising	˧˦	ɓlo˧˦	"wall"
High–top rising	˦˥	de˦˥	"younger brother"
High–low falling	˦˩	ɡ͡ba˩a˦˩	"goat"
Mid–low falling	˧˩	sre˧˩	"penis"

References

^ Paradis, Carole (1983). Description phonologique du guéré. Abidjan: Institut de Linguistique Appliquée, Université d'Abidjan.

External links

Wè Southern at Ethnologue
Wè Western at Ethnologue