Kagulu

Last updated: 2020-06-05

Background

Language Family: Niger-Congo / Atlantic-Congo / Volta-Congo / Benue-Congo / Bantoid / Southern / Narrow Bantu / East / Northeast Savanna Bantu / Northeast Coastal Bantu / Ruvu

• Kagulu is spoken in Eastern Tanzania.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b ᵐb	t d ⁿd			k ɡ ᵑɡ
Affricates			tʃ dʒ ⁿdʒ
Fricatives	f	s	ʃ			h
Nasals	m̥ m	n̥ n		ɲ	ŋ̥ ŋ
Approximants	w	l	j
Note: Where three phonemes share a cell, they are ordered voiceless, voiced, and prenasalized. Where two phonemes share a cell, they are ordered voiceless and voiced.

Vowels

• Unlike other Bantu languages, Kagulu does not possess phonemic tone (Petzell 2008, 19:40).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
b	/b/
d	/d/
e	/e/
f	/f/
g	/ɡ/
h	/h/
i	/i/
j	/dʒ/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
w	/w/
y	/j/
Multigraph
ch	/tʃ/
mb	/ᵐb/
mh	/m̥/
nd	/ⁿd/
nj	/ⁿdʒ/
nh	/n̥/
ng’	/ŋ/
ng	/ᵑɡ/
ng’h	/ŋ̥/
ny	/ɲ/
sh	/ʃ/

Misc. Rules

• Consonant clusters are not permitted in Kagulu, which provides further evidence for the multigraphs listed above to be representative of single phonemes (Petzell 2008, 19:41). Adjacent consonants (through in loanwords) are separated by an epenthetic vowel.
• Adjacent vowels are also not allowed in Kagulu (Petzell 2008, 19:42–45). If this occurs, such that /i/ or /u/ precedes a vowel, they become the glides [j] and [w]. Also, if this occurs through affixation, the first vowel may be deleted or the two vowels coalesce.
• Vowel harmony based mainly on height is present in the language (Petzell 2008, 19:45).

References

Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu Language of Tanzania: Grammar, Text and Vocabulary. Vol. 19. East African Languages and Dialects. Köln: Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.