Berta language
| Berta | |
|---|---|
| Gebeto | |
| Native to | Sudan and Ethiopia |
| Region | Benishangul-Gumuz |
| Ethnicity | Berta people, Wetawit |
Native speakers | 380,000 all Berta languages (2006–2007) 100,000 monolinguals in Ethiopia |
Nilo-Saharan?
| |
| Dialects |
|
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | wti (all Berta languages) |
| Glottolog | bert1248 |
Berta, also known as Gebeto, is a Berta language spoken by the Berta people (also Bertha, Barta, Burta) in Sudan and Ethiopia. As of 2006, Berta had approximately 180,000 speakers in Sudan. The three Berta languages — Gebeto, Fadashi and Undu — are often considered dialects of a single language. Berta proper includes the dialects Bake, Dabuso, Gebeto, Mayu, and Shuru; the dialect name Gebeto may be extended to all of Berta proper.
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiced | b | d | ɟ | g | ||
| ejective | pʼ | tʼ | (cʼ) | kʼ | (ʔ) | ||
| implosive | ɗ | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | θ | s | ʃ | h | |
| ejective | sʼ | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | (ɲ) | ŋ | |||
| Rhotic | r | ||||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||
| Approximant | j | w | |||||
- Voiced plosives /b, d, ɡ/ may be heard as voiceless [p, t, k] in free variation, word-initially or word-finally.
- A glottal stop [ʔ] mainly occurs between vowels, and may also be heard before word-initial vowel sounds.
- Nasal-stop sequences may occur morpheme-initially as [mb, nd, ŋɡ, ŋkʼ].
- /ŋ/ is heard as [ɲ] when preceding a front vowel /i/ or /e/.
- /kʼ/ is heard as a palatal [cʼ] when before front vowels.
- /ɡ/ can be heard as voiced palatal [ɟ] or as a voiceless palatal [c] when before front vowels.
- /h/ in word-final position can be heard as a fricative [x].
- /s, θ/ may sometimes occur as slightly voiced [z, ð] in vocalic or nasal environments.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː | u uː | |
| Mid | ɛ ɛː | ɔ ɔː | |
| Open | a aː |
- If a non-closed vowel sound, /ɛ/ or /ɔ/, are adjacent to a closed vowel sound like /i/ or /u/ within vowel harmony, they are then heard as more closed [e, o].
| Phoneme | Allophone |
|---|---|
| /i/ | [i], [ɨ~ɘ], [ɨ], [ɪ] |
| /a/ | [a], [ə], [æ], [ɜ], [ɐ] |
| /u/ | [u], [ʉ], [ʊ] |
Pronouns
The pronouns of Berta are as follows:
| Topic | Postverbal subject | Postverbal object | |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | àl(ì) | -lɪ́ɪ̀ | -ɟì |
| you (sg.) | (à)ŋɡó | -ŋó | -ŋɡó |
| he, she, it | ɲìnè | -né | ɲìnè, -né |
| we | χàtâŋ | -ŋàa | χàtâŋ |
| you (pl.) | χàtú | χátú | χàtú |
| they | mèrée | mérée | mèrée |
Syntax
The standard Berta word order for a sentence is as follows, below. In other words, Berta is a VSO language, and Berta syntactic structure is generally head-initial.
(Topic) Verb (Subject) (Indirect Object) (Direct Object) (Adverbial)
See also
- Berta word lists (Wiktionary)
References
- 1 2 Berta at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ↑ "Berta". Ethnologue. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
- ↑ Bremer, Nate D. 2016. A Sociolinguistic Survey of Six Berta Speech Varieties in Ethiopia. SIL Electronic Survey Report 2016-007. Addis Ababa: SIL International.
- ↑ Neudorf, Susanne (2016). Phonology of Berta. Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
- ↑ Neudorf, Susanne. "The use of body part lexemes in Berta." Nilo‐Saharan-Models and Descriptions (2015): 93-112.
Bibliography
- Torben Andersen. "Aspects of Berta phonology". Afrika und Übersee 76: pp. 41–80.
- Torben Andersen. "Absolutive and Nominative in Berta". ed. Nicolai & Rottland, Fifth Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium. Nice, 24–29 August 1992. Proceedings. (Nilo-Saharan 10). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. 1995. pp. 36–49.
- M. Lionel Bender. "Berta Lexicon". In Bender (ed.), Topics in Nilo-Saharan Linguistics (Nilo-Saharan 3), pp. 271–304. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag 1989.
- E. Cerulli. "Three Berta dialects in western Ethiopia", Africa, 1947.
- Susanne Neudorf & Andreas Neudorf: Bertha - English - Amharic Dictionary. Addis Ababa: Benishangul-Gumuz Language Development Project 2007.
- A. N. Tucker & M. A. Bryan. Linguistic Analyses: The Non-Bantu Languages of North-Eastern Africa. London: Oxford University Press 1966.
- A. Triulzi, A. A. Dafallah, and M. L. Bender. "Berta". In Bender (ed.), The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. East Lansing, Michigan: African Studies Center, Michigan State University 1976, pp. 513–532.
- Andersen, Torben (2023). "Berta". In Ronny Meyer; Zelealem Leyew; Bedilu Wakjira (eds.). Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 688–712.
