Neha Patil (Editor)

Shubi language

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Ethnicity
  
Shubi people

ISO 639-3
  
suj

Native speakers
  
(153,000 cited 1987)

Glottolog
  
shub1238

Region
  
Kagera Region in Tanzania

Language family
  
Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu Northeast Bantu Great Lakes Bantu Ruanda-Rundi Shubi

Shubi (Subi) is a Bantu language spoken in by the Shubi people in north-western Tanzania. It may use labiodental plosives /p̪/, /b̪/ (sometimes written ȹ, ȸ) as phonemes, rather than as allophones of /p, b/. Peter Ladefoged wrote:

We have heard labiodental stops made by a Shubi speaker whose teeth were sufficiently close together to allow him to make an airtight labiodental closure. For this speaker this sound was clearly in contrast with a bilabial stop; but we suspect that the majority of Shubi speakers make the contrast one of bilabial stop versus labial-labiodental affricate (i.e. bilabial stop closure followed by a labiodental fricative), rather than bilabial versus labiodental stop.

References

Shubi language Wikipedia


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