Izere language

Izere is a dialect continuum of Plateau languages in Nigeria. According to Blench (2008), it is four languages, though Ethnologue does not distinguish NW and NE Izere. The Cen and Ganang varieties are spoken by only 2000 each. Cen has added Berom noun-class prefixes and consonant alternation to an Izere base.

Izere
Afusare
Izarek
Native toNigeria
RegionKaduna State, Bauchi State, Plateau
Native speakers
500,000 (2006–2016)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3Variously:
izr  NE & NW Izere
cen  Cèn (Chen)
gne  Ganàng (Gashish)
GlottologNone
izer1242  Izeric, incl. Firan[2]

Dialects

Blench (2019) lists the following Izere dialects.[3]

  • Fobur
  • Northeastern (Federe)
  • Southern (Foron)
  • Ichèn
  • Faishang
  • Ganang

Phonology

The Izere phonetic inventory includes 29 consonants and seven vowels and distinguishes three tone levels; two additional contour tones appear only rarely, in loanwords and due to onomatopoeia.[4]

Consonants

The consonant phonemes of Izere are shown in the following table.

Bilabial Labiodental Alveolar Palato-alveolar Palatal Velar Labial–velar Glottal
Stop p  b t  d c  j k  ɡ k͡p  ɡ͡b
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ ŋ͡m
Trill (r)
Fricative f  v s  z ʃ  ʒ h
Affricate ts
Approximant y, ɥ w
Lateral l

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of Izere are shown in the following table.

Vowel phonemes
FrontBack
Close iu
Close-mid eo
Open-mid ɛ
Open a

Tonemes

There are three level (L, M & H) and two contour tonemes (LM & HL) in Izere; the latter two are found only in loanwords and onomatopoeia.

gollark: I mean, extreme poverty and such are going *down* in most countries, and literacy and good things like that are going up.
gollark: Also that.
gollark: Depends what you mean by "communism"?
gollark: The anarchocommunist-or-whatever idea of everyone magically working together for the common good and planning everything perfectly and whatnot also sounds nice but is unachievable.
gollark: I mean, theoretically there are some upsides with central planning, like not having the various problems with dealing with externalities and tragedies of the commons (how do you pluralize that) and competition-y issues of our decentralized market systems, but it also... doesn't actually work very well.

References

  1. NE & NW Izere at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Cèn (Chen) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Ganàng (Gashish) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Izeric". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Blench, Roger (2019). An Atlas of Nigerian Languages (4th ed.). Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.
  4. Blench, Roger; Kaze, Bitrus. Dictionary of the Izere language.
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