Tera language

Tera
Region	Nigeria
Native speakers	101,000 (2000)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Chadic Biu–Mandara Tera languages (A.1) Tera
Dialects	Pidlimdi (Hinna)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ttr
Glottolog	tera1251[2]

Tera is a Chadic dialect cluster spoken in north-eastern Nigeria in the north and eastern parts of Gombe State and Borno State.^[3] Blench (2006) believes Pidlimdi (Hinna) dialect is a separate language.^[4]

Phonology

Consonants^[5]

		Labial				Alveolar				Post-al. /Palatal		Velar				Glottal
		plain		palatal.		central		lateral				plain		labial.
Nasal			m		mʲ		n				ɲ		ŋ
Stop^1	plain	p	b			t^2	d^2			tʃ^2	dʒ^2	k	g	kʷ	gʷ
	prenasal.		ᵐb				ⁿd				ᶮdʒ		ᵑɡ		ᵑɡʷ
	implosive		É“		ɓʲ		É—						É
Fricative		f	v		vʲ	s	z	ɬ	n	ʃ	ʒ	x	ɣ	xʷ	ɣʷ	h^3
Approximant	plain								ɬ		j				w
	glottal.										jˀ^4
Trill							ɲ

^1 Voiceless plosives are lightly aspirated but unreleased before another consonant.^[6]

^2 /t/ and /d/ formally had /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ respectively as allophones but the two pairs have split; however, the alveolar plosives never precede front vowels and the postalveolar affricates rarely precede anything but front vowels.^[6]

^3 /h/ is a relatively new phoneme, appearing in loanwords from English and Hausa.^[6]

^4 /jˀ/ derives from a /ɗʲ/ that has lost its alveolar contact while retaining the palatal and glottal action.^[6]

Monophthongs of Tera, from Tench (2007:230)

Diphthongs of Tera, from Tench (2007:231)

Vowels^[7]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː	ɨ	u uː
Mid	e eː		o oː
Open		a aː

• The mid vowels /e, eː, o, oː/ are true-mid [eÌž, e̞ː, oÌž, o̞ː].^[7]
• The open vowels /a, aː/ are central [ä, äː].^[7]

Vowel length contrasts are neutralized in monosyllabic words with no coda consonants.^[7]

All vowels but /a/ and /aː/ are more open in closed syllables such as in [ɮɛp] ('to plait') and [xʊ́r] ('to cook soup'). /a/ and /aː/ tend to be fronted to [æ, æː] when following palatalized consonants.^[8]

Diphthongs, which have the same length as long vowels, consist of a non-high vowel and a high vowel:^[8]

Diphthong	Example	Orthography	Gloss
/eu/	/É“eu/	É“eu	'sour'
/oi/	/woi/	woi	'child'
/ai/	/ɣài/	ghai	'town'
/au/	/ɮàu/	dlau	'sickle'

• Phonetically, these diphthongs are [e̞ʊ, o̞ɪ, ɐɪ, ɐʊ].^[8]

Tone

Tera is a tonal language, distinguishing high, mid and low tone. Tone is not indicated orthographically since no minimal trios exist; minimal pairs can be distinguished by context.^[9]

Orthography

The first publication in Tera was Labar Mbarkandu nu Yohanna Bula Ki, a translation of the Gospel of John, which established an orthographic system. In 2004, this orthographic system was revised.^[3]

References

1. Tera at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Tera". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Tench (2007:227)
4. Blench, 2006. The Afro-Asiatic Languages: Classification and Reference List (ms)
5. Tench (2007:228)
6. Tench (2007:229)
7. Tench (2007:230)
8. Tench (2007:231)
9. Tench (2007:232)

Bibliography

• Tench, Paul (2007), "Tera", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 37 (1): 228–234, doi:10.1017/s0025100307002952