Lendu language

The Lendu language is a Central Sudanic language spoken by the Balendru, are an ethno-linguistic agriculturalist group residing in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo in the area west and northwest of Lake Albert, specifically the Ituri Region of Orientale Province. It is one of the most populous of the Central Sudanic languages. There are three-quarters of a million Lendu speakers in the DRC. A conflict between the Lendu and Hema people was the basis of the Ituri conflict.

Lendu
Balendru
Native toCongo (DRC)
EthnicityLendu, Hema, Alur, Okebu
Native speakers
760,000, including Ndrulo (1996)[1]
Nilo-Saharan?
  • Central Sudanic
Dialects
  • Badha
Language codes
ISO 639-3led
Glottologlend1245[2]
Linguasphere03-BAD

Besides the Balendru themselves, Lendu is spoken as a native language by a portion of the Hema, Alur, and Okebu.

Names

Ethnologue gives Bbadha as an alternate name of Lendu, but Blench (2000) lists Badha as a distinct language. A draft listing of Nilo-Saharan languages, available from his website and dated 2012, lists Lendu/Badha.

Phonology

Demolin (1995)[3] posits that Lendu has voiceless implosives, /ɓ̥ ɗ̥ ɠ̊/ (/ƥ ƭ ƙ/). However, Goyvaerts (1988)[4] had described these as creaky-voiced implosives /ɓ̰ ɗ̰ ɠ̰/, as in Hausa, contrasting with a series of modally voiced implosives /ɓ ɗ ɠ/ as in Kalabari, and Ladefoged judges that this seems to be a more accurate description.[5]

References
  1. Lendu at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Lendu". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Demolin, Didier. 1995. The phonetics and phonology of glottalized consonants in Lendu. In Connell, Bruce and Arvaniti, Amalia (eds.), Phonology and Phonetic Evidence. Papers in Laboratory Phonology IV, 368-385. Cambridge Univ. Press.
  4. Goyvaerts, Didier L. 1988. Glottalized Consonants a New Dimension. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 3. 97-102. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
  5. Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 87–89. ISBN 978-0-631-19815-4.
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