Koho language

Sre
	Kơho
Native to	Vietnam
Native speakers	200,000 (1999 & 2009 censuses)[1]
Language family	Austroasiatic Bahnaric South Sre–Mnong Sre; ; ; ;
Writing system	Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	; kpm – Kơho
Glottolog	koho1243[2]

Koho is a South Bahnaric language spoken by the Koho people, mainly in the Lâm Đồng Province of Vietnam.

The autonym of the Koho people is kon chau (IPA: [kɔn.caw]) while Kơho (IPA: [kə’hɔ]) is a Cham exonym.^[3]

Subgroups and dialects

There are at least twelve Kơho dialect groups for the area: Chil (Cil, Til); Kalop (Tulop); Kơyon (Kodu, Co-Don); Làc (Làt, Lach); Mà (Mạ, Maa); Nồp (Nop, Xre Nop, Noup); Pru; Ryông Tô (Riồng, Rion); Sop, Sre (Chau Sơre, Xrê); Talà (To La); and Tring (Trinh). Although Mạ/Maa is a Koho dialect group, the Mạ people identify as a separate ethnic group.^[4]^[3]

Phonology

Datas below are from H. Olsen (2015).^[3]

Consonants

Initial consonants

		Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	Voiceless	p	t	c	k	ʔ
	Aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	cʰ	kʰ
	Voiced	b	d	ɟ	g
	Implosive	ɓ	ɗ
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative			s			h
Rhotic			r
Approximant		w	l	j

Before the palatal finals /c/ and /ɲ/, there is an audible palatal offglide after the vowel [Vʲ], so that /pwac/ ‘flesh’ is pronounced as [pwaʲc] and /ʔaɲ/ ‘I (1st person singular)’ as [ʔaʲɲ].
The phoneme /r/ is commonly a voiced alveolar trill [r] but also often reduces to a flap [ɾ] when it occurs as the second segment in a consonant cluster.

Final consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p	t	c	k	ʔ
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative		s			h
Rhotic		r
Approximant	w	l	j

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	/i/	/ɨ~ɯ/	/u/
Close-mid	/e/	/ǝ/	/o/
Open-mid	/ɛ/		/ɔ/
Low		/a/	/ɑ/

Vowels contrast in leghth.

Morphology

Compounding

Compounding is a common way of coining new words in Koho. Some examples:

muh mat ‘face’ < muh ([muh]) ‘nose’ + mat ([mat]) ‘eye’
phe mbar ‘sticky rice’ < phe ([phɛ]) ‘husked rice’ + mbar ([mbar]) ‘sticky’
oui ao ‘clothes’ < oui ([ʔoːj]) ‘blanket’ + ao ([ʔaːw]) ‘shirt’

Affixing

One of the more productive prefixes in Sre is the causative tön- [tən-], converts intransitive verbs to causative verbs. If the prefixed verbs have a nasal initial, then the nasal cluster avoidance rule applied.

Word	Meaning	Prefixed form	Meaning
duh [duh]	to be hot	tönduh [tənduh]	to make hot
chöt [cʰət]	to die	tönchöt [təncʰət]	to kill
ring [riŋ]	to be flat, level, equal	tönring [tənriŋ]	to equalize, make right
mut [mut]	to enter	tömut [təmut]	to make enter
muu [muː]	to descend, go down	tömuu [təmuː]	to make descend, to lower

References

↑ Kơho at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Koho-Maa". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
1 2 3 H. Olsen, Neil. 2015. "Kơho-Sre." In Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages. Leiden: Brill.
↑ Le, Tan Duong (2003) A phonological comparison of Maa and Koho varieties. Master’s thesis, Payap University.

Sources

Olsen, Neil H. 2014. A descriptive grammar of Koho-Sre: A Mon-Khmer language. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Utah.

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[e18-1] Kơho at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)

[Glottolog-2] Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Koho-Maa". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

[handbook-3] 1 2 3 H. Olsen, Neil. 2015. "Kơho-Sre." In Jenny, Mathias and Paul Sidwell, eds (2015). The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages. Leiden: Brill.

[4] Le, Tan Duong (2003) A phonological comparison of Maa and Koho varieties. Master’s thesis, Payap University.