Kera is an East Chadic language spoken by 45,000 people in Southwest

Chad Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Repub ...

and 6,000 people in North

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west- central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; th ...

. It was called "Tuburi" by

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...

, a name shared with

Tupuri Tupuri (or Toupouri) is a language mostly spoken in the Mayo-Kebbi Est Region of southern Chad and in small parts of northern Cameroon. It is an Mbum language spoken by the Tupuri people with approximately 300,000 speakers. Tupuri was erron ...

. In Cameroon, Kera is spoken by small, isolated and scattered groups in the southern departments of Mayo-Danay ( Wina commune) and Diamaré (

Ndoukoula Ndoukoula is a town and commune in Cameroon. See also *Communes of Cameroon The Arrondissements of Cameroon are the third-level units of administration in Cameroon. The arrondissements are organised by divisions and sub divisions of each provi ...

district) in the Far North Region. It is mainly spoken in Chad. In Cameroon, the main group is near the border, south of

Viri A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky ...

. There are about 6,000 speakers in Cameroon.

Grammar

Kera is a subject–verb–object language, using prepositions. It uses exclusively borderline case-marking.

Phonology

The phonetic symbols and charts used are from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Consonants

Vowels
ATR allophones or undershoot in Kera? Retrieved 2019-06-02.

Kera's vowels are, including

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...

s: But can also be expressed as: * High The tongue is positioned near the top of the mouth. * Round The lips are rounded while the vowel is pronounced. * Front The tongue is positioned at the front of the mouth. Kera has

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, me ...

. In Kera, many words are required to only have vowels in the high or not high vowel class. For example, a word may have any of the vowels i ə u or any of the vowels e a o, but words containing both, e.g. words with i and o, are prohibited.

References

External links

Research on stress in Kera
Languages of Cameroon Languages of Chad East Chadic languages {{Cameroon-lang-stub