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 150 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, the Central African Republic, and northern Cam ...

dialect cluster A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated vari ...

spoken in north-eastern

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya 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 G ...

in the north and eastern parts of

Gombe State Gombe State ( ff, Leyddi Gommbe 𞤤𞤫𞤴𞤣𞤭 𞤺𞤮𞤥𞥆𞤦𞤫) is a state in northeastern Nigeria, bordered to the north and northeast by the state of Borno and Yobe, to the south by Taraba State, to the southeast by Adamawa Sta ...

and

Borno State Borno State is a state in the North-East geopolitical zone of Nigeria, bordered by Yobe to the west, Gombe to the southwest, and Adamawa to the south while its eastern border forms part of the national border with Cameroon, its northern borde ...

. 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

Origin of Tera (Nyimalti)

Kuji Hamidu Bukar, the Chief of Liji, noted that Nyimalti tribe migrated from Yemen in Arabian Peninsula together with other tribes like the Babur, Jukun, Bokewa, Jara, Margi, Tangale, Tula, Waja, Kanuri, Kanakuru, and Kare-Kare around 8th century AD. They sojourned through the route of lake Chad basin down to Buma on the Hawul river that joined the Gongola River valley. They moved northward and left some of their kiths and kins at Kanakuru, Dali, Gol, Kukal, Gasi, Kwata Tera, Wuyo, Balbiya, Ngazargamu and Shani to settle in Shinga. While some settled on the way during the long journey, some proceeded in search for greener pasture for their livestock, farm land and possibly a habitable place to practice their cultural heritage. From Shinga, it was gathered that some Nyimalti groups dispersed along several routes; some moved Eastward to Wade, some Northward to establish Bage, Gwani, Difa, Kinafa, Difa, Lubo and Kwali, some Westward to establish Liji, Kwadon, Kurba and southward to found Deba, Kalshingi, Jagali, Zambuk, Panda and Pata.

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, 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 the speech ...

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 verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

, 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 ( grc, Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην, translit=Euangélion katà Iōánnēn) is the fourth of the four canonical gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "sig ...

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

References

Bibliography

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