Kisi language (Tanzania)

Kisi is a Bantu language of Tanzania. Though only half or so of the Kisi people speak the language, use is vigorous where it is still spoken.

Not to be confused with Kissi language.

Kisi
Kikisi
Native to	Tanzania
Ethnicity	18,000 Kisi (2001?)[1]
Native speakers	10,200 (2001)[2]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Northeast Bantu Bena–Kinga (G60) Kisi
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kiz
Glottolog	kisi1243[3]
Guthrie code	G.67[4]
Linguasphere	99-AUS-re

Phonology

Consonant phonemes in Kisi

	Bialabial	Labio-dental	Alveolar	Post alveolar/ palatal	Velar	Glottal
Aspirated voiceless plosives	pʰ		tʰ		kʰ
Voiced plosives	b		d	ɟ	ɡ
Prenasalised voised plosive	ᵐb		ⁿd	ᶮɟ	ᵑɡ
Voiceless fricatives		f	s			h
Voiced fricatives	β			ʝ	ɣ
Voiceless affricatives				tʃ
Nasals	m		n	ɲ	ŋ
Liquids			l

Consonant phonemes in Kisi that occur only through morphological interaction

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Alveolar	Post alveolar/ palatal	Velar
Prenasalised voiceless plosives	ᵐpʰ		ⁿtʰ		ᵑkʰ
Prenasalised voiceless fricatives		ᶬf	ⁿs
Prenasalized voiceless affricatives				ⁿtʃ
Aspirated nasals	mʰ		nʰ	ɲʰ

Other phonemes:

• [ɾ] and [l] are in a free variation.
• [w] and [j] are not included in a phoneme chart in Kisi because they only occur as glide insertion between historically or morphologically adjacent vowels. [w] does not occur otherwise. For some speakers, [j] occurs as a free variant of [ʝ] which is considered incorrect by other speakers.

Vowels phoneme in Kisi

	Front	Central	Back
High - degree 1	i i:		u u:
High - degree 2	ɪ ɪ:		ʊ ʊ:
Mid	e e:		o o:
Low		a a:

Contrastive and obligatory length is marked with /:/. This does not necessarily reflect a difference in the length of production.

Diphthongs in Kisi

Symbol	Example words	Meaning
[e]-[i] [beⁱ]	Swahili: bei	'price'
[a]-[o] [ᵑɡaᵒ]	Swahili: ngao	'shield'

Swahili: bei, and Swahili: ngao - These Swahili words have been borrowed into Kisi and pronounced with a diphthong in Kisi

References

1. Kisi language (Tanzania) at Ethnologue (15th ed., 2005)
2. Kisi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
3. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Kisi". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
4. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online

• Gray, Hazel (2018). "Kisi Phonology and Morphology" (PDF). SIL International. (in Kisi). Archived from the original on 2018. Retrieved 2018-12-18.