Berta language

Berta
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
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Berta languages Berta; ;
Dialects	Shuru; Bake; Undu; Mayu; Fadashi; Dabuso; Beleje Gonfoye;
Writing system	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
Fricative	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)

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.

External links

[e25-1] 1 2 Berta at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)

[Wti-2] "Berta". Ethnologue. Retrieved 23 September 2023.

[3] Bremer, Nate D. 2016. A Sociolinguistic Survey of Six Berta Speech Varieties in Ethiopia. SIL Electronic Survey Report 2016-007. Addis Ababa: SIL International.

[4] Neudorf, Susanne (2016). Phonology of Berta. Dallas, Texas: SIL International.

[5] Neudorf, Susanne. "The use of body part lexemes in Berta." Nilo‐Saharan-Models and Descriptions (2015): 93-112.

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