Kera language

Kera is an East Chadic language spoken by 45,000 people in Southwest Chad and 6,000 people in North Cameroon.

Kera
Native to	Chad, Cameroon
Native speakers	(50,000 cited 1993)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Chadic East Chadic East Chadic A Kwang (A.3) Kera
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ker
Glottolog	kera1255

It was called "Tuburi" by Greenberg, a name shared with Tupuri.

Grammar

Kera is a subject–verb–object language, using prepositions. It uses exclusively borderline case-marking.

Phonology

The phonetic symbols and charts used are from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Consonants[2]

Bilabial

Labio- dental

Alveolar

Palatal

Velar

Glottal

Plosive

p

b

t

d

c

k

ɡ

Nasal

m

n

ŋ

Trill

r

Fricative

f

v

s

z

h

Approximant

j

Lateral  approximant

l

Vowels[3][4]

Kera's vowels are, including allophones:

	front	central	back
close	i	ɨ	u
mid	e / ɛ		o / ɔ
open	a / ə

But can also be expressed as:

• High The tongue is positioned near the top of the mouth.
• Round The lips are rounded while the vowel is pronounced.
• Front The tongue is positioned at the front of the mouth.

	not round front	not round central	round back
high	i	ɨ	u
not high	e / ɛ	a / ə	o / ɔ

Kera has vowel harmony.

In Kera, many words are required to only have vowels in the high or not high vowel class. For example, a word may have any of the vowels i ə u or any of the vowels e a o, but words containing both, e.g. words with i and o, are prohibited.

References

1. Kera at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Atanga, Lilian Lem; Ellece, Sibonile Edith; Litosseliti, Lia; Sunderland, Jane (2013). Gender and Language in Sub-Saharan Africa: Tradition, Struggle and Change. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 82. ISBN 9789027218742.
3. "Vowels in harmony - Kera". SIL International. 2013-02-08. Retrieved 2019-06-02.
4. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3aa8/052c008ef2d5b38f0146cf59c5d2641b8795.pdf ATR allophones or undershoot in Kera? Retrieved 2019-06-02.

External links

• Research on stress in Kera