Hehe language
| Hehe | |
|---|---|
| Kihehe | |
| Native to | Tanzania |
| Ethnicity | Hehe |
Native speakers | 810,000 (2006)[1] |
Niger–Congo?
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | heh |
| Glottolog | hehe1240 |
G.62[2] | |
| Linguasphere | 99-AUS-ua |
Hehe, also known by its native name Kihehe [kihehe], is a Bantu language that is spoken by the Hehe people of the Iringa region of Tanzania, lying south of the Great Ruaha River.[3] It was reported to have "Ngoni" features, that is, words of a Zulu-like language introduced when conquered by a Nguni or Zulu-like people in the early 19th century.[citation needed] However, other "Ngoni" speeches seem to have lost most of these distinctive features over the past 150-odd years, the language more resembling those of the neighbouring peoples.[citation needed] In 1977 it was estimated that 190,000 people spoke Hehe.[citation needed] There has been some Bible translation (British and Foreign Bible Society). Hehe may be mutually intelligible with Bena.[3]
Grammar
Hehe has 15 noun classes, marked with prefixes.[4]
Hehe has a complex tense-aspect-mood system.[5]
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | |||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | |||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | h | |
| voiced | v | (z) | ||||
| prenasal | ⁿz | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||
- [ʍ] can be heard as an allophone of /w/ among speakers in free variation.
- [z] occurs in the language, but is mainly heard as an allophone of /s/ after nasal sounds, or as a result of Swahili loanwords.[6]
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i iː | u uː | |
| Mid | e eː | o oː | |
| Low | a aː |
References
- ^ Hehe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
- ^ a b Dwyer, D. J., Yankee, E., & Michigan State Univ., E. r. (1985). African Language Resource Handbook: A Resource Handbook of the Eighty-two Highest Priority African Languages. Prepublication Edition. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED256170.pdf
- ^ David Odden, Introducing Phonology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 177.
- ^ Mtavangu, Norbert (2008). "Tense and aspect in Ikihehe". Occasional Papers in Linguistics. 3: 34–41.
- ^ Johnson, Martha B. (2015). A Contribution toward a Kihehe Grammar.
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