Nyole (also LoNyole, Lunyole, Nyuli) is a Bantu language spoken by the
Banyole in
Butaleja District,
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 ...
. There is 61% lexical similarity with a related but different
Nyole language in Kenya.
Phonology
Consonants
Nyole has series of voiceless, voiced, and
prenasalized
Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather than clus ...
stops. is
labio-velar.
Vowels
Historical changes
Nyole has an interesting development from
Proto-Bantu *p → Nyole . Schadeberg (1989) connects this
sound change
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...
to
rhinoglottophilia
In linguistics, rhinoglottophilia refers to the connection between laryngeal (glottal) and nasal articulations. The term was coined by James A. Matisoff in 1975.
There is a connection between the acoustic production of laryngeals and nasals, ...
, where the sound change developed first as → → . Then, given the acoustic similarity of and
breathy voice
Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like s ...
to
nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation in British English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
...
, the sound change progressed as → → . The velar place of articulation development is due to velar nasals being the least perceptible of the nasals and its marginal status in (pre-)Nyole and other Bantu languages. In closely related neighboring languages, *p developed variously into or or was deleted.
This historical development results in so-called "crazy" alternations, like resulting in as in the following:
: n-ŋuliira ("hear" stem form) : puliira "I hear"
: n-ŋumula ("rest" stem form) : pumula "I rest"
In the above two words, when the first person singular subject prefix is added to the stem starting with , the initial consonant surfaces as . In other forms (like "to hear" and "to rest"), the original stem-initial can be seen.
Writing System
See also
*
Luhya language
Luhya (; also Luyia, Oluluyia, Luhia or Luhiya) is a Bantu language of western Kenya.
Dialects
The various Luhya tribes speak several related languages and dialects, though some of them are no closer to each other than they are to neighboring ...
References
* Eastman, Carol M. (1972). Lunyole of the Bamenya, ''JAL'', ''11'' (3), 63-78.
* Morris, H. F. (1963). A note on Lunyole. ''Uganda Journal'', ''27'', 127-134.
* Schadeberg, Thilo C. (1989). The velar nasal in Nyole (E. 35). ''Annales Aequatoria'', ''10'', 169-179.
Available online.
* Wicks, Douglas (2006) A partial grammar sketch of Lunyole with an emphasis on the applicative construction
.
{{Authority control
Languages of Uganda
Luhya language