Kw'adza language

Kw'adza
Ngomvia
Native to	Tanzania
Region	Mbulu District
Extinct	late 20th century
Language family	Afro-Asiatic? Cushitic? Rift? East Rift Kw'adza
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wka
Glottolog	kwad1248[1]

Kw'adza (Qwadza) is an extinct Afroasiatic language formerly spoken in Tanzania in the Mbulu District. The last speaker died sometime between 1976 and 1999.^[2] It is poorly attested, and apart from perhaps being close to Aasax, its classification is not certain; although it has a large number of identifiably Cushitic roots, the numerals itame 'one' and be'a ~ mbɛa 'two', for example, suggest a connection with Hadza.

Phonology

The phonology is not certain, but the following has been suggested (Ehret 1980):

m	n		ɲ	ŋ
b	d			ɡ	ɡʷ
p	t			k	kʷ	ʔ
	tsʼ	tɬʼ	tʃʼ	kʼ	kʼʷ
f	s	ɬ		x	xʷ	h
β̞	dz	l	j

/ɡ/ and /l/ have the allophones [dʒ] and [ɽ] before front vowels. /tʃʼ/ is 'mildly' ejective. Ehret reports that /kʼ/ and /kʼʷ/ are voiced [ɡ, ɡʷ] if a preceding consonant is voiced.

Vowels are /a e i o u/.

Notes

1. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Kw'adza". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
2. Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

References

• Christopher Ehret, 1980. "Kw'adza vocabulary". ms.