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
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