Tera language

Tera is a Chadic dialect cluster spoken in north-eastern Nigeria in the north and eastern parts of Gombe State and Borno State. Blench (2006) believes Pidlimdi (Hinna) dialect is a separate language.

Blench lists these language varieties as part of the Tera language cluster.

• Nyimatli
• Pidlimdi
• Bura Kokura

^1 Voiceless plosives are lightly aspirated but unreleased before another consonant.

^2 /t/ and /d/ formally had /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ 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.

^3 /h/ is a relatively new phoneme, appearing in loanwords from English and Hausa.

^4 /jˀ/ derives from a /ɗʲ/ that has lost its alveolar contact while retaining the palatal and glottal action.

• The mid vowels /e, eː, o, oː/ are true-mid [e̞, e̞ː, o̞, o̞ː].
• The open vowels /a, aː/ are central [ä, äː].

Vowel length contrasts are neutralized in monosyllabic words with no coda consonants.

All vowels but /a/ and /aː/ are more open in closed syllables such as in [ɮɛp] ('to plait') and [xʊ́r] ('to cook soup'). /a/ and /aː/ tend to be fronted to [æ, æː] when following palatalized consonants.

Diphthongs, which have the same length as long vowels, consist of a non-high vowel and a high vowel:

• Phonetically, these diphthongs are [e̞ʊ, o̞ɪ, ɐɪ, ɐʊ].

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

The first publication in Tera was Labar Mbarkandu nu Yohanna Bula Ki, a translation of the Gospel of John, which established an orthographic system. In 2004, this orthographic system was revised.