Fuliiru language
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Fuliiru (Furiiru, Kifuliiru, Fulero) is a
Great Lakes Bantu The Great Lakes Bantu languages, also known as Lacustrine Bantu and Bantu zone J, are a group of Bantu languages of East Africa. They were recognized as a group by the ''Tervuren'' team, who posited them as an additional zone (zone J) to Guthrie' ...
language spoken by the Fuliiru people (''Bafuliiru''), also known as the ''Fuliru'' or ''Fulero'', who live north and west of the town of
Uvira Uvira is a city in the South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Uvira is a Roman Catholic diocese, a suffragan of the archdiocese of Bukavu. Geography It is located at the extreme north end of Lake Tanganyika. Kalundu is a lake ...
in Uvira Territory,
South Kivu South Kivu (''Jimbo la Kivu Kusini'' in Swahili), (french: Sud-Kivu) is one of 26 provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its capital is Bukavu. History South Kivu Province was created from Sud-Kivu District in 1989, when the exis ...
province in the far eastern part of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
. It is closely related to Kinyindu.


Phonology


Consonants

The table below gives the consonant set of Fuliiru. Several sounds change when preceded by a nasal: voiceless sounds become voiced, and /β/ and /h/ are realized as The phoneme /n/ assimilates to the place of consonants that follow it: it can be realized as ± ² or The phoneme /l/ is realized as after /n/, as ¾after the front vowels /e/ and /i/, and as elsewhere. The phoneme /ɾ/ is likewise realized as after /n/, but as ¾elsewhere.


Vowels

The table below gives the vowel sounds of Fuliiru. All five vowels occur in
long Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
and
short Short may refer to: Places * Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon * Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community * Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place People * Short (surname) * List of people known as ...
forms, a distinction that is phonemically distinctive. The
quality Quality may refer to: Concepts *Quality (business), the ''non-inferiority'' or ''superiority'' of something *Quality (philosophy), an attribute or a property *Quality (physics), in response theory *Energy quality, used in various science discipli ...
of a vowel is not affected by its length.


Tone

Like most Bantu languages, Fuliiru is tonal, with a two-way contrast between high and low tones. Morphemes can be underlyingly high (H), low (L), or toneless. Phonetically, high, low, mid, and falling tones can all occur; mid tones are the realization of an underlying LH sequence, and falling tones are the realization of an underlying HL sequence or an utterance-final H tone.


References

Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Rwanda-Rundi languages {{Africa-ethno-group-stub