Everything about Dahalo Language totally explained
Dahalo is an
endangered South Cushitic language spoken by at most 400 people on the
Kenyan coast near the mouth of the
Tana River. The Dahalo are dispersed among Swahili and other Bantu peoples, with no villages of their own, and are bilingual in those languages. It may be that children are no longer learning the language.
Dahalo has a highly diverse sound system using all four
airstream mechanisms found in human language:
clicks,
ejectives, and
implosives, as well as the universal
pulmonic sounds.
In addition, Dahalo makes a number of uncommon distinctions. It contrasts
laminal and
apical stops, as in
Basque and languages of Australia and California;
epiglottal and
glottal stops and fricatives, as in the
Mideast, the
Caucasus, and the American
Pacific Northwest; and is perhaps the only language in the world to contrast
alveolar and
palatal lateral fricatives and affricates.
It is suspected that the Dahalo may have once spoken a
Sandawe- or
Hadza-like language, and that they retained clicks in some words when they
shifted to Cushitic, because many of the words with clicks are basic vocabulary. If so, the clicks represent a
substratum.
Sounds
Consonants
Dahalo has 62 consonants:
The prenasalized voiceless stops have been analysed as syllabic nasals plus stops by some researchers. However, one would expect this additional syllable to give Dahalo words additional
tonic possibilities, as Dahalo pitch accent is syllable-dependent (see below), and Ladefoged reports that this doesn't seem to be the case.
When geminate, the epiglottals are a voiceless stop and fricative. (Thus /ʡ/ isn't pharyngeal as sometimes reported, since pharyngeal stops are not believed to be possible.) In utterance-initial position they may be a partially voiced (negative
voice onset time) stop and fricative. However, as singletons between vowels, /ʡ/ is a
flap or even an approximant with weak voicing, while /ʜ/ is a fully voiced approximant. Other
obstruents are similarly affected intervocalically, though not to the same degree.
/b d̪ d̠/ are often fricative [βð̪ ð̠] between vowels. Initially, they and /g/ are often voiceless, whereas /p t̪ t̠ k/ are fortis (perhaps aspirated). Tosco reports a voiced lateral /dɮ/. /w̜/ has little rounding. /j/ is only attested in a single root, jáːjo/ 'mother'.
Vowels
Dahalo has 10 vowels:
Dahalo has both long and short vowels.
Phonotactics
Dahalo words are commonly 2-4 syllables long. Syllables are exclusively of the
CV pattern, except that consonants may be
geminate between vowels. As with many other
Afro-Asiatic languages, gemination is grammatically productive. Voiced consonants partially devoice, and prenasalized stops denasalize when geminated as part of a grammitical function. However, lexical prenasalised geminate stops also occur.
(It is likely that the glottals and clicks don't occur as geminates, although only a few words with intervocalic clicks are known, such as
/ʜáŋ̊.)
Dahalo has pitch accent, normally with zero to one high-pitched syllables (rarely more) per root word. If there's a high pitch, it's most frequently on the first syllable; in the case of disyllabic words, this is the only possibility: for example /ʡani/ head, /p’úʡʡu/ pierce.
Grammar
Further Information
Get more info on 'Dahalo Language'.
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