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Tennet language
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Tennet language
Tennet is a Surmic language spoken by the Tennet people in South Sudan. The Tennet home area is a group of fifteen (15) villages at the northern part of Eastern Equatoria state, 65 kilometers northeast of Torit.
Tennet is spoken in fourteen villages, these villages are Imilwanit, Ngaalovi, Itir, Nyaaro, Leteji Ngaanlobok, Loudum, Le̱le̱, Lovi, Tare, Lobele, Imedu, Momoi and Lovirang. The major town for Tennet is Arilo, of Lafon County, Eastern Equatoria State (Ethnologue).
Most consonants are members of a fortis/lenis pair, and that fortis may be realized phonetically in several ways: lengthening, change from ingressive to egressive, trilling, devoicing, and fricative hardening (becoming a stop). The fortis counterpart of the voiced velar fricative [ɣ] has been omitted. In Randal (1995), the consonant chart includes it to show the consonants in the Tennet orthography. The fortis counterpart of [ɣ] is omitted here because it is phonetically identical to the fortis counterpart of [k].
Tennet has five [+ATR] vowels and five corresponding [-ATR] vowels. The vowels are /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/, and in the current orthography, [+ATR] vowels are marked with an underline. Tongue height may vary slightly without affecting the [ATR] quality of a vowel, so unlike certain West African languages (e.g. Akan and Igbo), the [+ATR] /e/, for example, may actually be slightly lower than the [-ATR] /e/. The [+ATR] feature spreads from right to left, so a [+ATR] suffix will cause the vowels in a [-ATR] stem to become [+ATR]. Tennet uses [ATR] to mark lexical and grammatical distinctions.
Any of the ten vowels may be lengthened. In the orthography, vowels are doubled to show length.
Tennet has two level tones and a falling tone. A rising tone is treated as a low-high sequence, because it occurs only on long vowels. In the current orthography the high tone is marked with an acute accent, falling is marked with a circumflex, and low is unmarked. Tone often marks grammatical relations and occasionally marks lexical distinctions.
Like its closer Surmic relatives, Tennet uses multiple strategies to mark number on nouns.
The number marking system is quite similar to that of Murle, for which Arensen has proposed semantically based categories to group nouns that use the same strategy for marking number.
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Tennet language AI simulator
(@Tennet language_simulator)
Tennet language
Tennet is a Surmic language spoken by the Tennet people in South Sudan. The Tennet home area is a group of fifteen (15) villages at the northern part of Eastern Equatoria state, 65 kilometers northeast of Torit.
Tennet is spoken in fourteen villages, these villages are Imilwanit, Ngaalovi, Itir, Nyaaro, Leteji Ngaanlobok, Loudum, Le̱le̱, Lovi, Tare, Lobele, Imedu, Momoi and Lovirang. The major town for Tennet is Arilo, of Lafon County, Eastern Equatoria State (Ethnologue).
Most consonants are members of a fortis/lenis pair, and that fortis may be realized phonetically in several ways: lengthening, change from ingressive to egressive, trilling, devoicing, and fricative hardening (becoming a stop). The fortis counterpart of the voiced velar fricative [ɣ] has been omitted. In Randal (1995), the consonant chart includes it to show the consonants in the Tennet orthography. The fortis counterpart of [ɣ] is omitted here because it is phonetically identical to the fortis counterpart of [k].
Tennet has five [+ATR] vowels and five corresponding [-ATR] vowels. The vowels are /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/, and in the current orthography, [+ATR] vowels are marked with an underline. Tongue height may vary slightly without affecting the [ATR] quality of a vowel, so unlike certain West African languages (e.g. Akan and Igbo), the [+ATR] /e/, for example, may actually be slightly lower than the [-ATR] /e/. The [+ATR] feature spreads from right to left, so a [+ATR] suffix will cause the vowels in a [-ATR] stem to become [+ATR]. Tennet uses [ATR] to mark lexical and grammatical distinctions.
Any of the ten vowels may be lengthened. In the orthography, vowels are doubled to show length.
Tennet has two level tones and a falling tone. A rising tone is treated as a low-high sequence, because it occurs only on long vowels. In the current orthography the high tone is marked with an acute accent, falling is marked with a circumflex, and low is unmarked. Tone often marks grammatical relations and occasionally marks lexical distinctions.
Like its closer Surmic relatives, Tennet uses multiple strategies to mark number on nouns.
The number marking system is quite similar to that of Murle, for which Arensen has proposed semantically based categories to group nouns that use the same strategy for marking number.