Tetela language
| Tetela | |
|---|---|
| Ɔtɛtɛla | |
| Native to | Democratic Republic of the Congo |
| Region | Northern Kasai Oriental Province |
Native speakers | 760,000 (1991)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
Either: tll – Tetela hba – Hamba |
| Glottolog |
tete1253[2] |
C.71[3] | |
Tetela (Otetela, Kitetela, Kikitatela), also Sungu, is a Bantu language of northern Kasai-Oriental Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo spoken by the Tetela people.
Ethnologue removes the Hamba dialect to a different branch of Bantu.[4] However, Maho (2009) retains it in Tetela.
Noun classes
In common with all Bantu languages, Tetela grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes (counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system), with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these.
class semantics prefix singular translation plural translation 1, 2 persons o-/ɔ-/w-, a- omfúnjí scribe, secretary amfúnjí scribes, secretaries 3, 4 trees, etc o-/ɔ-/w-, e-/ɛ- ojja place ejja places; region 5, 6 various di-/dy-, a- dihamvú fruit of Chrysophyllum lacourtianum ahamvú fruits of Chrysophyllum lacourtianum 7, 8 various ke-/e-, di-/dy- kesashi chief disashi chiefs 9, 10 animals, etc Ø-/N-, Ø-/N- mbódí goat mbódí goats 11, 10 abstract concepts, etc lo-, N- lolémí language némí languages 12, 13 various ka-/k-, to-/t- kashikɛ helmet (from French casque) toshikɛ helmets 19, 13 various °i- (complex morphology), to-/t- jɔ́ndɔ́ ??? tɔlɔ́ndɔ́ ???
References
- ↑ Tetela at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
Hamba at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) - ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Tetela–Hamba". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
- ↑ http://www.ethnologue.com/language/tll
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