Bari is the

Nilotic language The Nilotic languages are a group of related languages spoken across a wide area between South Sudan and Tanzania by the Nilotic peoples. Etymology The word Nilotic means of or relating to the Nile River or to the Nile region of Africa. Dem ...

of the Karo people, spoken over large areas of

Central Equatoria Central Equatoria is a states of South Sudan, state in South Sudan. With an area of , it is the smallest of the original South Sudanese states. Its previous name was Bahr al-Jabal (also Bahr-el-Jebel), named after a tributary of the White Nile t ...

state in

South Sudan South Sudan (), officially the Republic of South Sudan, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered on the north by Sudan; on the east by Ethiopia; on the south by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Kenya; and on the ...

, across the northwest corner of

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

, and into the

Democratic Republic of 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 ...

. Bari is spoken by several distinct tribes: the

Bari people Bari ( ; ; ; ) is the capital city of the Metropolitan City of Bari and of the Apulia region, on the Adriatic Sea in southern Italy. It is the first most important economic centre of mainland Southern Italy. It is a port and university city ...

themselves, the Pojulu, Kakwa, Nyangwara, Mundari, and

Kuku Kuku may refer to: People * Emir-Usein Kuku (born 1976), Crimean Tatar human rights defender * John Dean Kuku (born 1963), Solomon Islands politician * Kuku people, an ethnic group in South Sudan * Kuku Yulanji, an Aboriginal people of the Dai ...

. Each has its own dialect. The language is therefore sometimes called Karo or Kutuk ('mother tongue') rather than ''Bari''. Bari is a

tone language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis ...

. It has

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...

, subject–verb–object word order, and agglutinative verbal morphology with some suppletion. A very competent dictionary and grammar were published in the 1930s, but are very difficult to find today. More recently, a dissertation has been published on Bari tonal phonology, and another dissertation on Bari syntax is available.

Dialects

Dialects are: * Bari proper (Beri) * Pöjulu (Pajulu, Fadjulu, Fajelu, Madi) * Kakwa (Kakua, Kwakwak) adio broadcasts in Uganda* Nyangbara (Nyangwara, Nyambara) * Mandari (Mondari, Mundari, Chir, Kir, Shir) *

* Nyepu (Nyefu, Nyepo, Nypho, Ngyepu) * Ligo (Liggo)

Phonology

Consonants

This table is based on Spagnolo (1933). * // may also be heard as an affricate [] in free variation. * // can be heard as a flap [] when in between //.

Vowels

Bari and their kin, the Kakwa, have a cross-height vowel harmony, vowel-harmony system.

Orthography

The Bari alphabet is used by the Bari, Kakwa, Pojulu, and Kuku in

. There are four digraphs, ʼB, ʼD, ʼY and Ny, and the letter

eng Eng or ENG may refer to: Language and linguistics * Eng (letter), Ŋ ŋ * En with descender, Ң ң * eng, ISO 639-3 and ISO 639-2 code for English language * Velar nasal, a phoneme People * Eng (name), a given name and surname in various cu ...

, Ŋ.

References

General References

# ''Bari Language, Sudan Primer: Sillabari Ko Kutuk Na Bari''. The Catholic Press Institute. Juba, Sudan. # Owen, R.C.R.
Bari grammar and vocabulary
'' 1908. OCLC: 25040516 # Spagnolo, Lorenzo M. ''Bari grammar.'' 1933. Verona, Missioni Africane. OCLC: 34898784 # Vossen, Rainer. ''The Eastern Nilotes. (Kölner Beiträge zur Afrikanistik, 9.)''. 1982. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. # Yokwe, Eluzai. ''The tonal grammar of Bari.'' Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1987.

External links

The Book of Common Prayer in Bari (1953) * https://web.archive.org/web/20090215100524/http://www.openroad.net.au/languages/african/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Bari Language Agglutinative languages Eastern Nilotic languages Latin alphabets Languages of South Sudan Languages of Uganda Vowel-harmony languages