Tera is a

Chadic The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of the Sahel. They include 196 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, and northern Cameroon. By far the most widely ...

dialect cluster A dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standardized varieties as well as vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardized varieties, such as those used in developing countries or iso ...

spoken in north-eastern

Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...

in the north and eastern parts of

Gombe State Gombe State (; ) is a States of Nigeria, state in North East (Nigeria), northeastern Nigeria, bordered to the north and northeast by the states of Borno State, Borno in the vicinity of Gongola River and Lake Dadin Kowa Dam, Dadin Kowa and Yobe S ...

and

Borno State Borno is a States of Nigeria, state in the North East (Nigeria), North-East geopolitical zone of Nigeria. It is bordered by Yobe State, Yobe to the west, Gombe State, Gombe to the southwest, and Adamawa State, Adamawa to the south while its ea ...

. Blench (2006) believes Pidlimdi (Hinna) dialect is a separate language.

Varieties

Blench lists these language varieties as part of the Tera language cluster. *Nyimatli *Pidlimdi *Bura Kokura

Phonology

: Voiceless plosives are lightly aspirated but unreleased before another consonant. : and formally had and respectively as allophones but the two pairs have split; however, the alveolar plosives never precede front vowels and the postalveolar affricates rarely precede anything but front vowels. : is a relatively new phoneme, appearing in loanwords from English and

Hausa Hausa may refer to: * Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa * Hausa language, spoken in West Africa * Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states * Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse See also ...

. : derives from a that has lost its alveolar contact while retaining the palatal and glottal action. * The mid vowels are true-mid . * The open vowels are central . Vowel length contrasts are neutralized in monosyllabic words with no coda consonants. All vowels but and are more open in closed syllables such as in ('to plait') and ('to cook soup'). and tend to be fronted to when following palatalized consonants.

Diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

s, which have the same length as long vowels, consist of a non-high vowel and a high vowel: * Phonetically, these diphthongs are .

Tone

Tera is a

tonal 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 emphasi ...

, distinguishing high, mid and low tone. Tone is not indicated orthographically since no minimal trios exist; minimal pairs can be distinguished by context.

Orthography

The first publication in Tera was ''Labar Mbarkandu nu Yohanna Bula Ki'', a translation of the

Gospel of John The Gospel of John () is the fourth of the New Testament's four canonical Gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "Book of Signs, signs" culminating in the raising of Lazarus (foreshadowing the ...

, which established an orthographic system. In 2004, this orthographic system was revised.

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tera Language Biu-Mandara languages Languages of Nigeria