Acheron language
Acheron (Asheron) is a Niger–Congo language in the Talodi family of Kordofan, Sudan.
| Acheron | |
|---|---|
| Region | Moro Hills, Sudan |
Native speakers | 20,000 (2006)[1] 9,800 in home area (2006)[1] |
Niger–Congo?
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | acz |
| Glottolog | ache1245 |
| ELP | Acheron |
 Acheron is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Acheron derives from the Arabic word aɟɟur-uun which means "innocent people",[2] it was later "indigenised as acʊrʊn" (Stevenson 1956: 102) and turned into aʃərɔn. The autoethonym in Acheron is wɑ-rəmɛ for the people and ɡə-rəmɛ for the language.[2]
The number of active speakers is estimated to be 9.800.[2] This number includes the community members and "diaspora speakers"[2] in other Sudanese towns and abroad.
Nouns
| Consonants | bilabial | laminal
dental |
laminal
alveolar |
apical
postalveolar |
palatal | velar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | b, pp | d̪,t̪t̪ | d, tt | g, gw, kk | ||
| stiff cord plosive | k | |||||
| fricative | z | |||||
| stiff cord fricative | s, ss | |||||
| nasal | m, mm | n, nn | ɲ, ɲɲ | |||
| lateral | l, ll | |||||
| trill | r, rr | |||||
| flap | ||||||
| approximant | j | w, ww |
Further reading
- Norton, Russell. 1995. Variation and change in the phonology of Asheron. M.A. Dissertation, University of Essex.
- Norton, Russell. 2000. The noun classes of Asheron. Occasional Papers in the study of Sudanese Languages 8:23-55.
- Norton, Russell. 2013. The Acheron vowel system: a participatory approach. In Roger Blench & Thilo Schadeberg (eds), Nuba Mountain Language Studies. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe. pp. 195–217.
References
- Acheron at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- Norton, Rusell (2015-01-01). "Schadeberg, Thilo C. and Roger M. Blench: Nuba Mountain Language Studies". Journal of African Languages and Linguistics. 36 (1). doi:10.1515/jall-2015-0006. ISSN 0167-6164.
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