Oku (Ebkuo, Ekpwo, Ukfwo, Bvukoo, Kuɔ) is a Grassfields Bantoid language that is primarily spoken by the Oku people of northwest Cameroon, a fondom of the Tikar people.[citation needed] They are a different ethnic group from the Oku people of Sierra Leone.

Oku
Kuɔ
Native toCameroon
Native speakers
87,000 (from the 2005 census)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3oku
Glottologokuu1243

Phonology

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Consonants

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Oku has 21 consonant phonemes.[2] The consonant phoneme inventory of the language is shown below.

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Plain Labialized
Stop/Affricate voiceless /t/ /t͡ʃ/ /k/ //
voiced /b/ /d/ /d͡ʒ/ /g/ //
Fricative voiceless /f/ /s/
voiced /ɣ/ /ɣʷ/
Nasal /m/ //[a] /n/ //N//[b] /ŋ/
Lateral /l/
Glide /j/ /w/
  1. ^ a syllabic /m/
  2. ^ an archiphoneme that only appears stem-initially

Davis argues that Oku has five nasal phonemes. These are three non-syllabic nasals (/m/, /n/, and /ŋ/), syllabic //, and archiphonemic //N//.[2] // does not assimilate to the following consonant. However //N// assimilates before all consonants except /f/, /t͡ʃ/, and /d͡ʒ/, where it becomes /n/. [2]

Vowels

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Davis describes the following vowels in her thesis.[2]

Front Back
Unrounded Rounded
High Tense /i/ // /u/ //
Lax /ɪ/ /ɪː/
Mid Tense /ə/ /əː/
Lax /ɛ/ /ɛː/ /ɔ/ /ɔː/
Low /ɑ/ /ɑː/


Orthography

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The Oku alphabet has 25 letters.[3]

a b ch d dz e ɛ ə f g gh i j k l m n ŋ o p s t w y z

References

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  1. ^ Oku at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ a b c d Davis, Leslie Kim (December 1992). A Segmental Phonology of the Oku Language (PDF) (MA thesis). University of Texas at Arlington. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2023-12-12.
  3. ^ Blood & Davis 1999.

Further reading

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