Koho language

Kơho is a South Bahnaric language spoken by the Kơho people, mainly in the Lâm Đồng Province of Vietnam.

Sre
Kơho
Native to	Vietnam
Native speakers	200,000 (2019 census)[1]
Language family	Austroasiatic Bahnaric South Sre–Mnong Sre
Writing system	Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: kpm – Kơho cma – Maa
Glottolog	koho1243[2]

The autonym of the Kơho people is kon cau (IPA: [kɔn.caw]) while Kơho (IPA: [kəˈhɔ]) is a Cham exonym.[3]

Subgroups and dialects

There are at least twelve Kơho dialect groups for the area: Chil (Cil, Til); Kalop (Tulop); Kơyon (Kodu, Co-Don); Làc (Làt, Lach); Mà (Mạ, Maa); Nồp (Nop, Xre Nop, Noup); Pru; Ryông Tô (Riồng, Rion); Sop, Sre (Chau Sơre, Xrê); Talà (To La); and Tring (Trinh). Although Mạ/Maa is a Koho dialect group, the Mạ people identify as a separate ethnic group.[4][3]

Phonology

Data below are from Olsen (2015).[3]

Consonants

Initial consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	Voiceless	p	t	c	k	ʔ
	Aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	cʰ	kʰ
	Voiced	b	d	ɟ	g
	Implosive	ɓ	ɗ
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative			s			h
Rhotic			r
Approximant		w	l	j

• The phoneme /r/ is commonly a voiced alveolar trill [r] but also often reduces to a flap [ɾ] when it occurs as the second segment in a consonant cluster.

Final consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop		p	t	c	k	ʔ
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative			s			h
Rhotic			r
Approximant		w	l	j

• Before the palatal finals /c/ and /ɲ/, there is an audible palatal offglide after the vowel [Vʲ], so that /pwac/ ‘flesh’ is pronounced as [pwaʲc] and /ʔaɲ/ ‘I (1st person singular)’ as [ʔaʲɲ].

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	/i/	/ɨ~ɯ/	/u/
Close-mid	/e/	/ǝ/	/o/
Open-mid	/ɛ/		/ɔ/
Low		/a/	/ɑ/

• Vowels contrast in length.

Morphology

Compounding

Compounding is a common way of coining new words in Koho. Some examples:

• muh mat ‘face’ < muh ([muh]) ‘nose’ + mat ([mat]) ‘eye’
• phe mbar ‘sticky rice’ < phe ([phɛ]) ‘husked rice’ + mbar ([mbar]) ‘sticky’
• ôi ao ‘clothes’ < ôi ([ʔoːj]) ‘blanket’ + ao ([ʔaːw]) ‘shirt’

Affixing

One of the more productive prefixes in Sre is the causative tơn- [tən-], converts intransitive verbs to causative verbs. If the prefixed verbs have a nasal initial, then the nasal cluster avoidance rule applied.

Word	Meaning	Prefixed form	Meaning
duh [duh]	to be hot	tơnduh [tənduh]	to make hot
chơt [cʰət]	to die	tơnchơt [təncʰət]	to kill
ring [riŋ]	to be flat, level, equal	tơnring [tənriŋ]	to equalize, make right
mut [mut]	to enter	tơmut [təmut]	to make enter
muu [muː]	to descend, go down	tơmuu [təmuː]	to make descend, to lower

References

1. Kơho at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   Maa at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Koho-Maa". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
3. Olsen, Neil H. (2015). "Kơho-Sre". In Jenny, Mathias; Sidwell, Paul (eds.). The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages. Leiden: Brill.
4. Le, Tan Duong (2003). A phonological comparison of Maa and Koho varieties (Master’s thesis). Payap University.

Sources

• Olsen, Neil H. (2014). A descriptive grammar of Kơho-Sre: a Mon-Khmer language (Ph.D. thesis). University of Utah.