Urhobo language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Urhobo
Region Delta State
Ethnicity Urhobo people
Native speakers
 550,000  (1993)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 urh

Urhobo is one of the Edoid languages and is spoken by the Urhobo people of southern Nigeria. Two closely related languages spoken by the Urhobo, Okpe and Uvwie, are sometimes mistaken for dialects of Urhobo.[citation needed] Urhobo is endangered by the impact of Nigerian Pidgin English.

Phonology

Urhobo has a rather reduced system, compared to proto-Edoid, of seven vowels; these form two harmonic sets, /i e a o u/ and /i ɛ a ɔ u/.[2]

It has a conservative consonant inventory for an Edoid language. It maintains three nasals, and only five oral consonants, /ɺ, l, ʋ, j, w/, have nasal allophones before nasal vowels.

  Labial Labiodental Alveolar Palatal Velar Labio-velar 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
Trill   r̝        
Flap   ɺ [ɾ̃]        
Approximant   ʋ [ʋ̃] l [n] j [ɲ]   w [ŋʷ]  

Examples

Temu: A substance or person reaching a position or status respectively.

  • It is likely to originate from Atamu/Atumu, meaning 'Sun'.

Dictionaries

Urhobo dictionaries have been compiled by Ukere, Osubele, and Julius Arerierian.[citation needed] A multilingual dictionary of English, Okpe, Urhobo and Uvwie was compiled by Akpobọmẹ Diffrẹ-Odiete with funding from Foundation for Endangered Languages.

References

  1. ↑ Urhobo reference at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
  2. ↑ Archangeli & Pulleyblank, 1994. Grounded phonology, p 181ff
  • Frank Kügler, Caroline Féry, Ruben Van De Vijver (2009) Variation and Gradience in Phonetics and Phonology



This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.