Koho language
Sre | |
---|---|
Kơho | |
Native to | Vietnam |
Native speakers | 200,000 (1999 & 2009 censuses)[1] |
Austroasiatic
| |
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.