// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Samwe language say to its friend? "You sam-we".
 | This article needs to be updated. (April 2025) |
| Samwe | |
|---|---|
| Wara | |
| Region | Burkina Faso |
| Ethnicity | Samba |
Native speakers | (4,500 cited 1993)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | wbf |
| Glottolog | wara1292 |
| ELP | Wara |
Samwé (samoe), also known as Wara (ouara, ouala), is a Gur language of Burkina Faso. Dialects are Negueni-Klani, Ouatourou-Niasogoni, and Soulani. Niasogoni speakers have difficulty with Negueni, but not vice versa.
Phonology
[edit]Consonants
[edit]| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labial- velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c | k | kp |
| voiced | b | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ||||
| Fricative | f | s | ||||
| Flap | ɾ | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||
- /b/ can be lenited to [β̞] between vowels.[3]
- /t/ has a free variant [d] after nasals, vowels, and other consonants.[3]
- /c/ is voiced [ɟ] after nasals and between vowels.[3]
- /k/ is often [g] or [ɰ] between vowels. It tends to stay voiceless at morpheme boundaries.[4]
- /kp/ becomes voiced [gb] between vowels or after nasals. /kp is not allowed before /u/.[4]
- [ʔ], which is not phonemic, occurs intervocalically between the same vowel.[5]
- /f/ is always voiceless.[6]
- /s/ is voiced [z] intervocalically and after nasals, [ʃ] before /ia/ and /ie/, and [s] elsewhere. /s/ can be lenited to [ɹ], which Ouattara represents as [z̞]. As with stops, voicing and lenition are in free variation.[7]
- /ɾ/ can also be realized as [r] or [ɹ].[8] /ɾ/ is also in free variation with /n/ in some words. Sometimes, /ɾn/ becomes /nn/ or /rr/.[9]
- /l/ and /n/ are contrastive, but roughly 20 words have /l~n/ in free variation.[9]
Vowels
[edit]Samwe has 20 vowels: 7 short oral vowels, 7 long oral vowels, 3 short nasal vowels, and 3 long nasal vowels.
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| Close | i | iː | u | uː | ||
| Close-mid | e | eː | o | oː | ||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɛː | ɔ | ɔː | ||
| Open | a | aː | ||||
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| Close | ĩ | ĩː | ũ | ũː | ||
| Open | ã | ãː | ||||
Samwe has two types of vowel harmony: ATR harmony and front-back harmony. /ɛ, ɔ/ do not occur in stems with /i, e, o, u/.[11] Front and back vowels (/i, e/ and /u, o) do not co-occur in disyllabic imperative verb stems, but this rule is not followed in other verb forms.[12] /a/ is neutral in both types.[13]
Notes
[edit]- ↑ Samwe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ↑ Ouattara 2015, p. 96.
- 1 2 3 Ouattara 2015, p. 98.
- 1 2 Ouattara 2015, p. 99.
- ↑ Ouattara 2015, p. 100.
- ↑ Ouattara 2015, p. 105.
- ↑ Ouattara 2015, pp. 105–106.
- ↑ Ouattara 2015, p. 110.
- 1 2 Ouattara 2015, p. 111.
- 1 2 Ouattara 2015, p. 120.
- ↑ Ouattara 2015, p. 155.
- ↑ Ouattara 2015, p. 158.
- ↑ Ouattara 2015, p. 155, 158.
References
[edit]- Ouattara, Virpi (2015). A phonological and tonal analysis of Samue using Optimality Theory (Thesis). University of Turku. hdl:10024/104773. ISBN 978-951-29-6125-2.
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