Bari is the Nilotic language of the Karo people, spoken over large areas of Central Equatoria state in South Sudan, across the northwest corner of Uganda, and into the Democratic Republic of Congo.
| Bari | |
|---|---|
| Barian | |
| Karo, Kutuk | |
| Region | South Sudan |
| Ethnicity | Karo peoples |
Native speakers | L1: 770,000 (2017)[1] L2: 180,000 (2013)[1] |
| Dialects | |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bfa |
| Glottolog | bari1283 Barianbari1284 Bari |
Bari is spoken by several distinct tribes: the Bari people themselves, the Pojulu, Kakwa, Nyangwara, Mundari, and Kuku. Each has its own dialect. The language is therefore sometimes called Karo or Kutuk ('mother tongue') rather than Bari.
Bari is a tone language. It has vowel harmony, subject–verb–object word order, and agglutinative verbal morphology with some suppletion. A very competent dictionary and grammar were published in the 1930s, but are very difficult to find today. More recently, a dissertation has been published on Bari tonal phonology, and another dissertation on Bari syntax is available.
Dialects
editDialects are:
Phonology
editConsonants
editThis table is based on Spagnolo (1933).[2]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ʔ | |
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | g | ||
| Implosive | ɓ | ɗ | ʄ | |||
| Fricative | s | (h) | ||||
| Rhotic | r | |||||
| Approximant | w | l | j | |||
- /ɟ/ may also be heard as an affricate [dʒ] in free variation.
- /l/ can be heard as a flap [ɾ] when in between /u/.
Vowels
editBari and their kin, the Kakwa, have a cross-height[clarification needed] vowel-harmony system.[3][4]
| +ATR | -ATR | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Central | Back | Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | i | u | ɪ | ʊ | ||
| Mid | e | o | ɛ | ɔ | ||
| Open | ɑ̘ | a | ||||
Orthography
editThe Bari alphabet is used by the Bari, Kakwa, Pojulu, and Kuku in South Sudan. There are four digraphs, ʼB, ʼD, ʼY and Ny, and the letter eng, Ŋ.
| Uppercase | A | B | ʼB | D | ʼD | E | G | J | I | Y | ʼY | K | L | M | N | Ŋ | Ny | O | Ö | P | R | S | T | U | W |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lowercase | a | b | ʼb | d | ʼd | e | g | j | i | y | ʼy | k | l | m | n | ŋ | ny | o | ö | p | r | s | t | u | w |
| Uppercase | Ŋ | Ö |
|---|---|---|
| Lowercase | ŋ | ö |
| Alternatives | ng | o |
| Uppercase Unicode (hexadecimal) | 014A | 00D6 |
| Lowercase Unicode (hexadecimal) | 014B | 00F6 |
| Unicode Character Code Chart | Latin Extended A | Latin-1 |
References
edit- ^ a b Bari at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ Spagnolo, Lorenzo M. Bari grammar. 1933. Verona, Missioni Africane.. OCLC: 34898784
- ^ SIL Bibliography: Yokwe and Hall 1981
- ^ Hout, Katherine (2019). Dominance-as-markedness: evidence from Bari. Studies in African Linguistics, Volume 48, Number 2, 2019: University of California San Diego. pp. 206–224.
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General References
edit- Bari Language, Sudan Primer: Sillabari Ko Kutuk Na Bari. The Catholic Press Institute. Juba, Sudan.
- Owen, R.C.R. Bari grammar and vocabulary. 1908. OCLC: 25040516
- Spagnolo, Lorenzo M. Bari grammar. 1933. Verona, Missioni Africane. OCLC: 34898784
- Vossen, Rainer. The Eastern Nilotes. (Kölner Beiträge zur Afrikanistik, 9.). 1982. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
- Yokwe, Eluzai. The tonal grammar of Bari. Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1987.
External links
edit
- Kitap Kwakwaset The Book of Common Prayer in Bari (1953)
- https://web.archive.org/web/20090215100524/http://www.openroad.net.au/languages/african/