| Oku | |
|---|---|
| Kuɔ | |
| Native to | Cameroon |
Native speakers | 87,000 (from the 2005 census) [1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
oku |
| Glottolog |
okuu1243 |
Oku (Ebkuo, Ekpwo, Ukfwo, Bvukoo, Kuɔ) is a Grassfields Bantoid language that is primarily spoken by the Oku people of northwest Cameroon, a fondom of the Tikar people.[ citation needed] They are a different ethnic group from the Oku people of Sierra Leone.
Phonology
Consonants
Oku has 21 consonant phonemes. [2] The consonant phoneme inventory of the language is shown below.
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Labialized | |||||||
| Stop/Affricate | voiceless | / t/ | / t͡ʃ/ | / k/ | / kʷ/ | |||
| voiced | / b/ | / d/ | / d͡ʒ/ | / g/ | / gʷ/ | |||
| Fricative | voiceless | / f/ | / s/ | |||||
| voiced | / ɣ/ | / ɣʷ/ | ||||||
| Nasal | / m/ | / m̩/ [a] | / n/ | //N// [b] | / ŋ/ | |||
| Lateral | / l/ | |||||||
| Glide | / j/ | / w/ | ||||||
Davis argues that Oku has five nasal phonemes. These are three non-syllabic nasals (/ m/, / n/, and / ŋ/), syllabic / m̩/, and archiphonemic //N//. [2] / m̩/ does not assimilate to the following consonant. However //N// assimilates before all consonants except / f/, / t͡ʃ/, and / d͡ʒ/, where it becomes / n/. [2]
Vowels
Davis describes the following vowels in her thesis. [2]
| Front | Back | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | ||||||
| High | Tense | / i/ | / iː/ | / u/ | / uː/ | ||
| Lax | / ɪ/ | / ɪː/ | |||||
| Mid | Tense | / ə/ | / əː/ | ||||
| Lax | / ɛ/ | / ɛː/ | / ɔ/ | / ɔː/ | |||
| Low | / ɑ/ | / ɑː/ | |||||
Orthography
The Oku alphabet has 25 letters. [3]
| a | b | ch | d | dz | e | ɛ | ə | f | g | gh | i | j | k | l | m | n | ŋ | o | p | s | t | w | y | z |
References
- ^ Oku at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ a b c d Davis, Leslie Kim (December 1992). A Segmental Phonology of the Oku Language (PDF) (MA thesis). University of Texas at Arlington. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-12-12.
- ^ Blood & Davis 1999.
Further reading
- Blood, Cynthia L.; Davis, Leslie (1999). Oku- English Provisional Lexicon (PDF). Yaoundé: SIL. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-03-15.
- Nforbi, Emmanuel (April 1993). Oku Verb Morphology: Tense Aspect and Mood (PDF) (post-graduate diploma thesis). University of Yaoundé I. Retrieved March 2, 2018.
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