Guruntum language

Guruntum
Guruntum-Mbaaru gùrdùŋ
Spoken in	Nigeria
Native speakers	15,000 (As of 1993)  (date missing)
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Chadic West B B.3 Guruntum Guruntum
Language codes
ISO 639-3	grd

Guruntum is a Chadic language spoken by about 15,000 people (as of 1993) in Nigeria.

Classification

Guruntum is a West Chadic language of the B subgroup.

Major dialects include Kuuku, Gayar, Mbaaru, Dooka, Gar and Karakara.

Phonology

Vowels

Guruntum contrasts long and short forms for all vowels except for /ɨ/. In addition, two nasalized vowel phonemes exist: /ũː/ /ãː/.

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

There are two diphthongs, /ai/ and /au/.

Consonants

		Labial			Alveolar	Postalveolar or palatal	Velar
		Plain	Palatalized	Labialized			Plain	Palatalized	Labialized
Nasal		m	mʲ	mʷ	n	nʲ	ŋ
Stop	prenasalized	ᵐb			ⁿd	ᶮdʒ	ᵑɡ	ᵑɡʲ	ᵑɡʷ
	voiceless	p	pʲ		t		k	kʲ	kʷ
	voiced	b	bʲ		d	dʒ	ɡ	ɡʲ	ɡʷ
	implosive	ɓ			ɗ
Fricative	voiceless	f	fʲ	fʷ	s	ʃ
	voiced	v		vʷ	z	ʒ
Trill					r
Approximant					l	j			w

/r/ is realized as a flap intervocalically before back vowels; elsewhere it is a trill.

Tone

Guruntum has four tones: high, low, rising (low-high) and falling (high-low).

References

• Jaggar, Philip J. (1998). "Guruntum (gùrdùŋ) (West Chadic-B): Linguistics notes and wordlist". African Languages and Cultures 1 (2): 169–189.