Berta proper, a.k.a. ''Gebeto'', is spoken by the Berta (also ''Bertha, Barta, Burta'') in

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

and

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

. As of 2006 Berta had approximately 180,000 speakers in Sudan. The three

Berta languages The Berta languages, or Funj, traditionally considered dialects of a single language, are Gebeto (Berta proper), Fadashi, and Undu. They are either a small family (or language isolate) of their own, or a primary branch of the Nilo-Saharan langu ...

, Gebeto, Fadashi and Undu, are often considered dialects of a single language. Berta proper includes the dialects Bake, Dabuso, Gebeto, Mayu, and Shuru; the dialect name ''Gebeto'' may be extended to all of Berta proper.

Phonology

Consonants

* Voiced plosives /b, d, ɡ/ may be heard as voiceless , t, kin free variation, word-initially or word-finally. * A glottal stop �mainly occurs between vowels, and may also be heard before word-initial vowel sounds. * Nasal-stop sequences may occur morpheme-initially as b, nd, ŋɡ, ŋkʼ * /ŋ/ is heard as �when preceding a front vowel /i/ or /e/. * /kʼ/ is heard as a palatal ʼwhen before front vowels. * /ɡ/ can be heard as voiced palatal �or as a voiceless palatal when before front vowels. * /h/ in word-final position can be heard as a fricative * /s, θ/ may sometimes occur as slightly voiced , ðin vocalic or nasal environments.

Vowels

* If a non-closed vowel sound, /ɛ/ or /ɔ/, are adjacent to a closed vowel sound like /i/ or /u/ within vowel harmony, they are then heard as more closed , o

Pronouns

The pronouns of Berta are as follows:

References

Bibliography

* Torben Andersen. "Aspects of Berta phonology". ''Afrika und Übersee'' 76: pp. 41–80. * Torben Andersen. "Absolutive and Nominative in Berta". ed. Nicolai & Rottland, ''Fifth Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium. Nice, 24–29 August 1992. Proceedings.'' (Nilo-Saharan 10). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. 1995. pp. 36–49. * M.

Lionel Bender Marvin Lionel Bender (August 18, 1934 – February 19, 2008) was an American linguist. Life Bender was born August 18, 1934, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He travelled throughout the world, particularly in Northeast Africa, and was an accompli ...

. "Berta Lexicon". In Bender (ed.), ''Topics in Nilo-Saharan Linguistics'' (Nilo-Saharan 3), pp. 271–304. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag 1989. * E. Cerulli. "Three Berta dialects in western Ethiopia", ''Africa'', 1947. * Susanne Neudorf & Andreas Neudorf: ''Bertha - English - Amharic Dictionary''. Addis Ababa: Benishangul-Gumuz Language Development Project 2007. * A. N. Tucker & M. A. Bryan. ''Linguistic Analyses: The Non-Bantu Languages of North-Eastern Africa.'' London: Oxford University Press 1966. * A. Triulzi, A. A. Dafallah, and M. L. Bender. "Berta". In Bender (ed.), ''The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia''. East Lansing, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University 1976, pp. 513–532.

External links

World Atlas of Language Structures The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-RO ...

information o
Berta

Website maintained by the language community, including published literature and an online dictionary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Berta Language Berta languages Languages of Sudan Languages of Ethiopia Subject–verb–object languages