Oku language
Oku | |
---|---|
Kuɔ | |
Native to | Cameroon |
Native speakers | 87,000 (from the 2005 census)[1] |
Niger–Congo?
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | oku |
Glottolog | okuu1243 |
Oku (Ebkuo, Ekpwo, Ukfwo, Bvukoo, Kuɔ) is a Grassfields Bantoid language that is primarily spoken by the Oku people of northwest Cameroon, a fondom of the Tikar people.[citation needed] They are a different ethnic group from the Oku people of Sierra Leone.
Phonology
Consonants
Oku has 21 consonant phonemes.[2] The consonant phoneme inventory of the language is shown below.
Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plain | Labialized | |||||||
Stop/Affricate | voiceless | / t /
|
/t͡ʃ/ | /k/ | /kʷ/ | |||
voiced | /b/ | / d /
|
/d͡ʒ/ | /g/ | /gʷ/ | |||
Fricative | voiceless | /f/ | /s/ | |||||
voiced | /ɣ/ | /ɣʷ/ | ||||||
Nasal | /m/ | /m̩/[a] | / n /
|
//N//[b] | /ŋ/ | |||
Lateral | / l /
|
|||||||
Glide | /j/ | /w/ |
Davis argues that Oku has five nasal phonemes. These are three non-syllabic nasals (/n/. [2]
Vowels
Davis describes the following vowels in her thesis.[2]
Front | Back | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unrounded | Rounded | ||||||
High | Tense | /i/ | /iː/ | /u/ | /uː/ | ||
Lax | /ɪ/ | /ɪː/ | |||||
Mid | Tense | /ə/ | /əː/ | ||||
Lax | /ɛ/ | /ɛː/ | /ɔ/ | /ɔː/ | |||
Low | /ɑ/ | /ɑː/ |
Orthography
The Oku alphabet has 25 letters.[3]
a | b | ch | d | dz | e | ɛ | ə | f | g | gh | i | j | k | l | m | n | ŋ | o | p | s | t | w | y | z |
References
- ^ Oku at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ a b c d Davis, Leslie Kim (December 1992). A Segmental Phonology of the Oku Language (PDF) (MA thesis). University of Texas at Arlington. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-12-12.
- ^ Blood & Davis 1999.
Further reading
- Blood, Cynthia L.; Davis, Leslie (1999). Oku- English Provisional Lexicon (PDF). Yaoundé: SIL. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-03-15.
- Nforbi, Emmanuel (April 1993). Oku Verb Morphology: Tense Aspect and Mood (PDF) (post-graduate diploma thesis). University of Yaoundé I. Retrieved March 2, 2018.