Nyangatom language

Nyangatom
Native to	Ethiopia
Region	Omo River region
Ethnicity	Nyangatom
Native speakers	24,000 (2007 census)[1]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Nilotic Eastern Lotuxo-Teso Teso–Turkana Turkana Nyangatom
Writing system	none
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nnj
Glottolog	nyan1315[2]

Nyangatom (also Inyangatom, Donyiro, Dongiro, Idongiro) is a Nilo-Saharan language (Eastern Sudanic, Nilotic) spoken in Ethiopia by the Nyangatom people. It is an oral language only, having no working orthography at present. Related languages include Toposa and Turkana, both of which have a level of mutual intelligibility; Blench (2012) counts it as a dialect of Turkana.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive	Voiceless	p	t		k
	Voiced	b	d		ɡ
Affricate	Voiceless			t͡ʃ
	Voiced			d͡ʒ
Fricative			s
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Flap			ɲ
Approximant		w	l	j

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Near-close	ɪ		ʊ
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

• Vowel length is contrastive in Nyangatom, as in dʒík 'completely' vs. dʒíík 'always'
• Before a pause, short vowels carrying a single, simple tone are devoiced.

Bibliography

• Dimmendall, Gerrit J. 2007. "Ñaŋatom language" in Siegbert Uhlig (ed.) Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Vol 3. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. pp. 1131–1132.

References

1. 2007 Census
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Nyangatom". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.