22
votes
Ncuti Gatwa is, according to Wikipedia, pronounced /ˈʃuːti ˈɡætwɑː/ - where is the NC orthography derived from?
In Kinyarwanda, <nc> represents phonetic [n̥tʃʰ], at least in a somewhat-conventional style of IPA transcriptions. The [t] portion of the cluster is brief, and English speakers generally do not ...
- 83.4k
11
votes
Ncuti Gatwa is, according to Wikipedia, pronounced /ˈʃuːti ˈɡætwɑː/ - where is the NC orthography derived from?
As noted by user7626, incuti means "friend" in Kinyarwanda. But the usual form of the word is inshuti in Kinyarwanda, and incuti is dialectal. Incuti is also the usual form in Kirundi, which ...
- 111
8
votes
Accepted
Origin for specific letters used in Swahili for tenses
First, the "letters" question is answered by understanding that Swahili is (now) written using the Latin alphabet, and the sounds that those represent are the morphemes for marking past, ...
- 83.4k
6
votes
Have other language families been mapped like Proto-Indo-European has?
Yes, there are very many researchers working to reconstruct proto-languages other than Indo-European. There are a number of languages that are not clearly related to any other language (e.g. ...
- 83.4k
5
votes
Is Swahili a Mora-counting language like Japanese?
In essence, Swahili stress has two rules:
If the word is shaped like NC(C*)V, the first nasal is syllabic, and stressed. (For example, ḿbwa "dog", ḿtu "person".)
Otherwise, the stress is on the ...
- 69.6k
5
votes
Accepted
What is Songhay's Family?
This is a very small field, where one abstaining scholar prevents reaching a consensus. I think one should discount any one-off pre-Greenbergian affiliation claims which have not been re-affirmed, ...
- 83.4k
4
votes
Accepted
African languages containing "the clicks"
The question is rather broad, so I'll just focus on one part of it. There are no clicks in "Shona" (a fluid social construct), i.e. Karanga, Zezuru, Manyika, Korekore, Kalanga. There are a ...
- 83.4k
4
votes
Accepted
Which mutually intelligible language groups are spoken by more than 1 million people in Cameroon?
This is years late, but offering it anyway:
Ethnologue tends to approach language from what I've heard called a "splitter" perspective, where in effect certain differences are considered sufficient ...
- 56
4
votes
Accepted
Are ~simba (Bantu) and ~simha (Indic) related?
That is a coincidence, the two words are not related, neither are the Indo-European and Bantu languages.
The Swahili simba 'lion' comes from the Proto-Bantu *ǹcímbá 'any of various wild felines or ...
- 18.6k
4
votes
Subject prefixes in Bantu languages
For Lingala grammars, you might want to read this paper, which contains references to grammars (not well-meaninged class projects labeled "grammar") and some discussion of the dialect problem. Lingala ...
- 83.4k
4
votes
Accepted
African languages spoken continuously in the US (language islands)
No there are no such communities - we gotta understand that the circumstances under which European people resettled and African people found themselves in North America are different. When slaves were ...
- 919
3
votes
Accepted
Subject prefixes in Bantu languages
Excellent question! It just so happens that this is exactly what my group is researching at the moment!
Are there Bantu languages where, unlike Zulu and Swahili, the subject prefix system has only ...
- 69.6k
3
votes
Is Swahili a Mora-counting language like Japanese?
The term "mora counting" has a specific technical meaning, based on the connection between duration and certain linguistic units (moras, syllables, stress feet). In a so-called syllable-timed language,...
- 83.4k
2
votes
Accepted
Have other language families been mapped like Proto-Indo-European has?
There are a great many language families studied by linguists, and part of the demonstration of their relatedness typically involves the classification of the members of that family into subgroups.
...
- 9,880
2
votes
Accepted
How To Solve UKLO Mandombe Problem
The numbers 1 through 5 are based on the five basic vowels in Mandombe: i, u, e, o, and a.
You can find the "closed triangle" shape of the number 4 in any syllables that contain an o vowel, ...
- 69.6k
2
votes
What's the origin of the word "br" in Yemeni Arabic?
I gave this a try with my comment:
ብርሃን bǝrhan is from በርሀ bärhä "to be bright". This is the source of በራ bärra too. ብሩህ bǝruhǝ is probably related, since it has b and r at the start. برق ...
- 507
2
votes
About Bamileke language Kwa
I will re-interpret the question so that it is clearly not off topic, as follows:
I met a gentleman who claims to speak the Bamileke language Kwa in
Cameroon. He denied that it was the language ...
- 83.4k
2
votes
Accepted
List of languages with numbers of L1 speakers in Africa
You can get such information from Ethnologue. I don't know of e.g. a document that lists all languages of Africa along with L1 population, but you can piece together such a list (tediously, ...
- 83.4k
2
votes
Are ~simba (Bantu) and ~simha (Indic) related?
Indic languages are not related to the Bantu languages genetically; however, both Hindi/Urdu and Swahili were influenced by Arabic due to contact between speakers. Neither of these words arose through ...
1
vote
Are ~simba (Bantu) and ~simha (Indic) related?
If the word is borrowed, the direction of borrowing would have to be from Bantu to Indic, given that nsimba is widely distributed in Bantu, not limited to Eastern Bantu. This is not impossible in ...
- 83.4k
1
vote
Help identifying words in unknown language from the Caribbean
Koen Bostoen would know the answer. The known resources on Vili are listed here. Kongo "goat" would be along the lines of nkombo and "lion" is nkosi, but there are many forms of Kongo: these are from ...
- 83.4k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible