Tetela language

Tetela (Otetela, Kitetela, Kikitatela), also Sungu, is a Bantu language of northern Kasai-Oriental Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is spoken by the Tetela people.

Tetela
Ɔtɛtɛla
Native toDemocratic Republic of the Congo
RegionNorthern Kasai Oriental Province
Native speakers
(760,000 cited 1991)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
tll – Tetela
hba – Hamba
Glottologtete1250  Tetela[2]
hamb1245  Hamba[3]
C.71[4]

Noun classes

Like other Bantu languages, Tetela grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes (counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system), with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of them.

classsemanticsprefixsingulartranslationpluraltranslation
1, 2 persons o-/ɔ-/w-, a-omfúnjíscribe, secretaryamfúnjíscribes, secretaries
3, 4 trees, etc o-/ɔ-/w-, e-/ɛ-ojjaplaceejjaplaces; region
5, 6 various di-/dy-, a-dihamvúfruit of Chrysophyllum lacourtianumahamvúfruits of Chrysophyllum lacourtianum
7, 8 various ke-/e-, di-/dy-kesashichiefdisashichiefs
9, 10 animals, etc Ø-/N-, Ø-/N-mbódígoatmbódígoats
11, 10 abstract concepts, etc lo-, N-lolémílanguagenémílanguages
12, 13 various ka-/k-, to-/t-kashikɛhelmet (from French casque)toshikɛhelmets
19, 13 various °i- (complex morphology), to-/t-jɔ́ndɔ́???tɔlɔ́ndɔ́???

References
  1. Tetela at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Hamba at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Tetela". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Hamba de Lomela". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online


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