Mafa language
Afro-Asiatic language
| Mafa | |
|---|---|
| Mafahay | |
| Native to | Cameroon, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Sierra Leone, Sudan |
| Region | Far North Province, Borno State, Adamawa State |
Native speakers | 2,000,000 (2005)[1] |
Language family | Afro-Asiatic
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | maf |
| Glottolog | mafa1239 |
Mafa is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in northern Cameroon and Northern Nigeria by the Mafa people.
Dialects
Mafa is widely spoken in the department of Mayo-Tsanaga from Mokolo to the north. Mafa includes the following dialects.[2]
- Central Mafa in Koza commune and in Mokolo town
- West Mafa in the northwest of Mokolo Commune (Magoumaz)
- East Mafa in the northeast (Soulede and Roua communes)
There are 136,000 speakers in Cameroon.[2]
Phonology
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː | ɨ | ʉ | u uː | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | œ | ɔ | ||
| Open | a | ||||
Consonants
| Labial | Dental/Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | sibilant | plain | lab. | plain | lab. | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | (ŋ) | ||||||
| Stop/ Affricate | voiceless | p | t | t͡s | t͡ʃ | k | kʷ | ʔ | |
| voiced | b | d | d͡z | d͡ʒ | ɡ | ɡʷ | |||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ⁿd͡z | ⁿd͡ʒ | ᵑɡ | ᵑɡʷ | |||
| implosive | ɓ | ɗ | |||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | ɬ | s | ʃ | h | hʷ | ||
| voiced | v | ɮ | z | ʒ | ɣ | ɣʷ | |||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||||
| Trill | r | ||||||||
- /ᵑɡ/ is heard as a velar nasal [ŋ] when in word-final position.[3]
Notes
- ^ Mafa at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ a b Binam Bikoi, Charles, ed. (2012). Atlas linguistique du Cameroun (ALCAM) [Linguistic Atlas of Cameroon]. Atlas linguistique de l'Afrique centrale (ALAC) (in French). Vol. 1: Inventaire des langues. Yaoundé: CERDOTOLA. ISBN 9789956796069.
- ^ Barreteau, Daniel; Le Bléis, Yves (1990). Lexique Mafa: Langue de la Famille Tchadique Parlée au Cameroun. Paris: Éditions de l'Orstom.
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See also: General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages
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