Ganza language

Ganza, also known as Ganzo or Koma, is an Omotic language spoken in the Al Kurumik District of the Blue Nile (state) in Sudan and in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia, specifically in the village districts of Penishuba and Yabeldigis.

Ganza
غانزا
Native toSudan, Ethiopia
RegionAsosa Zone of Benishangul-Gumuz Region
Native speakers
3,000 (2007)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3gza
Glottologganz1246
ELPGanza

It also goes by the names Ganzo, Gwami, Koma, and Koma-Ganza.[1]

Phonology

Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ŋ ʔ̃
Plosive voiceless p t k ʔ
ejective
voiced b d ɡ
Fricative voiceless s ʃ h
ejective
voiced z
Approximant l j w
Trill r

Ganza does not utilize consonant length phonemically.[2]:106

Vowels[2]:107
FrontBack
Close iu
Mid eo
Open a

Although vowel length is typically contrastive in Omotic languages, Ganza does not have a clear contrast between long and short vowel phonemes. Instead, Ganza has predictable utterance-final vowel lengthening and a set of monosyllabic words with double vowels.[2]:109

References

  • Smolders, Joshua. 2015. A Wordlist of Ganza. Addis Ababa: SIL Ethiopia

Notes

  1. Ganza at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) closed access
  2. Smolders, Joshua (2016). "A Phonology of Ganza" (pdf). Linguistic Discovery. 14 (1): 86–144. doi:10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.470. Retrieved 2017-01-16.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.