Kenga language

Spoken in

  • Nilo -Saharan African languages Zentralsudanisch west Sara Bagirmi Kenga

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Ssa

KYQ

Kenga is one of the Sara - Bagirmi languages ​​that belong to the Zentralsudanischen branch of the Nilo- Saharan languages.

It is spoken by 40,000 people in 52 villages in the area of Bitkine ( Guera region).

The Kenga is an SVO language. It has neither gender nor noun classes. The verb system comprises a dozen different tense and aspect forms.

Phonology

The consonant system of Kenga looks like this:

It should be noted that the voiced alveolar fricative / z / in general and the palatal nasal / ɲ / word-initially are very rare.

The Kenga has three tones (high, medium and low), they differ both words and different verb forms, eg AASA H -T " you finish " vs. AASA T -M " he finished ."

Grammar

The Kenga has the following verb forms - in the schema PN is a prefix that indicates person and number:

Person and number are displayed with prefixes and suffixes, and in part by sound; The table shows the conjugation of the basic form (neutral )

Swell

  • Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. ( ed.) 2005 Ethnologue: . Languages ​​of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.:. SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.
  • Palayer, Pierre et al., 2004. Dictionnaire Kenga ( Tchad ). Paris: SELAF.
  • Vandame, Charles. In 1968. Grammaire Kenga. Lyon: Afrique et Langage ( Études linguistiques 2).
  • Nilo -Saharan African languages
  • Tonal language
  • Single language
Guéra Region Language family Grammatical aspect Labial consonant Alveolar consonant Palatal consonant Velar consonant Voiceless Voice (phonetics) Implosive consonant Fricative consonant Grammatical number
471576
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