| Giryama | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Kenya |
| Region | Kilifi district |
| Ethnicity | Mijikenda, Giryama |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | nyf |
| Glottolog | giry1241 |
Giryama is a dialect variety of the Mijikenda language spoken along the southern coast of Kenya, predominantly in the Kilifi district.
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental/Alveolar | Post-alv./ Palatal |
Velar | Glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | plain | sibilant | plain | lab. | |||||
| Nasal | m | mʷ | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||||
| Plosive/ Affricate |
voiceless | p | t | t͡s | t͡ʃ | k | kʷ | (ʔ) | ||
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | t͡sʰ | tʃʰ | kʰ | kʷʰ | ||||
| voiced | b | d | d͡z | d͡ʒ | ɡ | ɡʷ | ||||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ⁿd͡z | ᶮd͡ʒ | ᵑɡ | ᵑɡʷ | ||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | h | |||||
| voiced | β | v | ð | z | ʒ | |||||
| Rhotic | ɾ ~ r | |||||||||
| Lateral | l | |||||||||
| Approximant | j | w | ||||||||
- Labialized sounds /mʷ, kʷ, kʷʰ, ɡʷ, ᵑɡʷ/ can alternatively be pronounced as labio-velar stops [ŋ͡m, k͡p, k͡pʰ, ɡ͡b, ᵑɡ͡b] among speakers in free variation.
- /ɾ/ may have allophones as either [ɾ], [r], or [ɹ], all heard interchangeably.
- [ʔ] is only heard in between vowel sounds, to break up a sequence of two vowels.1
- Taylor (1891), noted two dental stops [t̪, d̪], however they were not easy to identify and therefore are not considered as phonemes.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | a |
References
References
- Volk, Erez (2007). High, low and in between: Giryama tonology (MA thesis). Tel Aviv University.
Sources
Sources
- Taylor, William Ernest. 1891. Giryama vocabulary and collections. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK).