Mono language (Congo)

Not to be confused with Mono language (Solomon Islands) or Mono language (Native American).

Mono
Spoken in	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Region	Northwestern corner of Congo (DRC)
Native speakers	65,000  (1984)
Language family	Ubangian Banda Central Banda Mid-Southern Mono
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mnh

Mono is a language spoken by about 65,000 people in the northwestern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is one of the Banda languages, a subbranch of the Ubangian branch of the Niger–Congo languages. It has five dialects: Bili, Bubanda, Mpaka, Galaba, and Kaga.

Mono has 33 consonant phonemes, including three labial-velar stops (/k͡p/, /ɡ͡b/, and prenasalized /ᵑ͡ᵐɡ͡b/), an asymmetrical eight-vowel system, and a labiodental flap ([ⱱ]) that contrasts with both /v/ and /w/. It is a tonal language.

References

• Kamanda-Kola, Roger. 2003. Phonologie et morpho-syntaxe du mono: Langue oubanguienne du Congo R.D. (LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics 60). Munich: LINCOM EUROPA.
• Olson, Kenneth S. 2004. 'Mono'. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34(2). 233–238.
• Olson, Kenneth S. 2005. The phonology of Mono (SIL International and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics 140). Dallas: SIL & UTA.
• Olson, Kenneth S. & Brian E. Schrag. 2000. 'An overview of Mono phonology'. In H. Ekkehard Wolff & Orin Gensler (eds.), Proceedings from the 2nd World Congress of African Linguistics, Leipzig 1997, 393–409. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.

External links

• SIL article on new phonetic symbol for labiodental flap