The Kunama language has been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family, though it is distantly related to the other languages, if at all. Kunama is spoken by the

Kunama people The Kunama are an ethnic group native to Eritrea. They are one of the smallest ethnic communities in Eritrea, constituting only 4% of the population. Most of the estimated 260,000 Kunama live in the remote and isolated area between the Gash and ...

of the Gash-Barka Region in western

Eritrea Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa, with its capital and largest city being Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia in the Eritrea–Ethiopia border, south, Sudan in the west, and Dj ...

and just across the

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

n border. The language has several dialects including: Barka, Marda, Aimara, Odasa, Tika, Lakatakura, Sokodasa, Takazze-Setit and Tigray. Ilit and Bitama are not mutually intelligible and so may be considered distinct languages. There have been some use of the Kunama language in publications. "The first Bible translation product in Kunama was the Gospel of Mark prepared by Andersson and published in 1906."

Phonology

Consonants

* is only of marginal status. * are labialized as after back vowels. * is heard as aspirated in syllable-initial position.

Vowels

* can be heard as when in unstressed syllable position.

References

Relevant literature

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External links

World Atlas of Language Structures The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-RO ...