The Lyélé language (Lele) is spoken in the
Sanguié Province of
Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory Coast to the southwest. It covers an area of 274,223 km2 (105,87 ...
by approximately 130,000 people known as Lyéla, Léla, Gourounsi or
Gurunsi. It is spoken in the towns of Réo, Kyon, Tenado, Dassa, Didyr, Godyr, Kordié, Pouni and Zawara. The language is also sometimes known by the wider term
Gurunsi.
Syntactically, Lyélé is a SVO language with postpositions. Determiners and adjectives are placed after the noun.
Unlike most other languages, Lyélé has only one paradigm for all pronouns, including demonstratives, interrogatives, and relatives. Tone can sometimes differentiate between an interrogative and a demonstrative, but this may be a result of interrogative intonation rather than tone marked on the word itself.
Writing system
The nasalization is indicated with the
tilde
The tilde (, also ) is a grapheme or with a number of uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish , which in turn came from the Latin , meaning 'title' or 'superscription'. Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
on the vowel nasalized .
Tones are indicated using accents, except for the midtone :
* grave accent for low tone;
* the acute accent for the high tone;
* caron for rising tone;
* the circumflex accent for the falling tone.
[Nikiema 1993 does not list the circumflex accent but it is used in the 2001 Bible translation published by Wycliffe Bible Translators.]
References
Works cited
*
External links
Database of audio recordings in Lyélé – basic Catholic prayersGlobal Recordings Network: Lyélé Language
Gurunsi languages
Languages of Burkina Faso
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