Ɨbʉdhʉ, also called Budu, is a
Bantu language
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantÊŠÌ€), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...
spoken by the
Budu people in the
Wamba Territory in the
Orientale Province
Orientale Province () is one of the former provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its predecessors the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo. It went through a series of boundary changes between 1898 and 2015, when it was divided ...
of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...
. Its orthography uses the special characters
ɨ,
ʉ,
É› and
É”, as well as
modifier letters colon
꞉
The colon alphabetic letter is used in a number of languages and phonetic transcription systems, for vowel length in Americanist Phonetic Notation, for the vowels and in a number of languages of Papua New Guinea, and for grammatical tone in s ...
and equal sign ꞊ for grammatical tone, marking past and future tense, respectively.
A variety of this language is called Matta and is spoken locally both north and south of
Maboma.
Phonology
Consonants
*
only occurs in the Koya dialect of Budu.
* /h/ can be heard as either a voiced
¦or voiceless
among different speakers.
* /É—/ can be heard as
or a tap
¾in free variation.
*
Vowels
Notes
Nyali languages
Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
{{Bantu-lang-stub