Native to Uganda Native speakers 340,000 (2002 census) Glottolog nyol1238 | Region Tororo District ISO 639-3 nuj | |
Language family Niger–Congo
Atlantic–Congo
Benue–Congo
Bantoid
Bantu
Northeast Bantu
Great Lakes Bantu
Masaba–Luhya (J.30)
Nyole | ||
Nyole (also LoNyole, Lunyole, Nyuli) is a Bantu language spoken by the Luhya people in Tororo District, Uganda near Lake Kyoga. There is 61% lexical similarity with a related but different Nyole language in Kenya.
Contents
Consonants
Nyole has series of voiceless, voiced, and prenasalized stops. /w/ is labio-velar.
Historical changes
Nyole has an interesting development from Proto-Bantu *p → Nyole /ŋ/. Schadeberg (1989) connects this sound change to rhinoglottophilia, where the sound change developed first as *[p] → [ɸ] → [h]. Then, given the acoustic similarity of [h] and breathy voice to nasalization, the sound change progressed as [h] → [h̃] → [ŋ]. The velar place of articulation development is due to velar nasals being the least perceptible of the nasals and its marginal status in (pre-)Nyole and other Bantu languages. In closely related neighboring languages, *p developed variously into /h/ or /w/ or was deleted.
This historical development results in so-called "crazy" alternations, like /n/ + /ŋ/ resulting in /p/ as in the following:
n-ŋuliira ("hear" stem form) : puliira "I hear" n-ŋumula ("rest" stem form) : pumula "I rest"In the above two words, when the first person singular subject prefix /n-/ is added to the stem starting with /ŋ/, the initial consonant surfaces as /p/. In other forms (like /oxu-ŋuliira/ "to hear" and /oxu-ŋumula/ "to rest"), the original stem-initial /ŋ/ can be seen.