Bena is a Bantu language spoken by the Bena people of the Iringa region of

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

Phonology

Consonants

Voiceless sounds almost always occur as aspirated stops; ʰ, tʰ, kʰ * /v/ can be realized as �intervocalically. * �can occur as an allophone of /d/ before long non high vowels. * can occur as an allophone of /k/, /h/ in the Maswamu dialect. * ç, tʃcan occur as allophones of /ts/, in the Twangabita dialect. * ��zcan occur as an allophone of /ⁿs/. * �can occur as an allophone of /j/ in the Maswamu dialect. * �, ʋcan occur as allophones of /w/ among some speakers. * Prenasalised stops may be devoiced when occurring word-finally (ex. /ᵐb/ ~ ��b̥.

Vowels

* /i, u/ before non-rounded vowels are recognized as glides

, w The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...

References

* Languages of Tanzania Northeast Bantu languages {{Bantu-lang-stub