Nyole language
Encyclopedia
Nyole is Luhya dialect spoken by 341 000 people in Tororo District
Tororo District
Tororo District is a district in Eastern Uganda. Like most other Ugandan districts, it is named after its "chief town", Tororo.-Location:Tororo District is bordered by Mbale District to the north, Manafwa District to the northeast, the Republic of Kenya to the east, Busia District to the south,...

, Uganda
Uganda
Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

 near Lake Kyoga
Lake Kyoga
Lake Kyoga is a large shallow lake complex of Uganda, about in area and at an elevation of 914 m. The Victoria Nile flows through the lake on its way from Lake Victoria to Lake Albert. The main inflow from Lake Victoria is regulated by the Nalubaale Power Station in Jinja. Another source of water...

. There is 61% lexical similarity with a related but different Nyole dialect in Kenya.

Consonants

Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Velar consonant
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....

Plosive p t k
b d ɡ
mb nd ɲdʒ ŋɡ
Nasal
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...

m n ɲ ŋ
Fricative ɸ s x
β
Liquid
Liquid consonant
In phonetics, liquids or liquid consonants are a class of consonants consisting of lateral consonants together with rhotics.-Description:...

l ~ ɾ
Approximant w j (w)


Nyole has series of voiceless, voiced, and prenasalized stops. /w/ is labio-velar.

Vowels

Front
Front vowel
A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...

Back
Back vowel
A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...

High i u
Mid
Mid vowel
A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...

e o
Low a

Historical changes

Nyole has an interesting development from Proto
Proto-language
A proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead.Often the proto-language is not known directly...

-Bantu *p → Nyole /ŋ/. Schadeberg (1989) connects this sound change
Sound change
Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...

 to rhinoglottophilia
Rhinoglottophilia
In linguistics, rhinoglottophilia refers to the connection between laryngeal and nasal articulations. The term was coined by James A. Matisoff in 1975....

, where the sound change developed first as *[p] → [ɸ] → [h]. Then, given the acoustic similarity of [h] and breathy voice
Breathy voice
Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them. This produces an audible noise...

 to nasalization
Nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...

, the sound change progressed as [h] → [h̃] → [ŋ]. The velar place of articulation development is due to velar nasals being the least perceptible of the nasals and its marginal status in (pre-)Nyole and other Bantu languages. In closely related neighboring languages, *p developed variously into /h/ or /w/ or was deleted.

This historical development results in so-called "crazy" alternations, like /n/ + /ŋ/ resulting in /p/ as in the following:
n-ŋuliira ("hear" stem form) : puliira "I hear"
n-ŋumula ("rest" stem form) : pumula "I rest"


In the above two words, when the first person singular subject prefix /n-/ is added to the stem starting with /ŋ/, the initial consonant surfaces as /p/. In other forms (like /oxu-ŋuliira/ "to hear" and /oxu-ŋumula/ "to rest"), the original stem-initial /ŋ/ can be seen.
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