Inor language
Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia
Inor (pronounced [inoːr]), sometimes called Ennemor, is an Afroasiatic language spoken in central Ethiopia. One of the Gurage languages, it is mainly spoken within the Gurage Zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region, as well as by speakers of the language who have settled in Ethiopian cities, especially Addis Ababa. In addition to the morphological complexity that is common to all Semitic languages, Inor exhibits the very complex morphophonology characteristic of West Gurage languages.
Endegegn, Enner, Gyeto, and the extinct dialect Mesmes are all sometimes considered dialects of Inor.
Inor possesses nasal vowels, which are unusual for a Gurage language. Many of these may be the result of historical rhinoglottophilia.
01Phonology
Consonants
| labial | alveolar | alveo- palatal |
palatal | velar | glottal | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | labial | plain | labial | plain | labial | |||||
| Stops and affricates |
ejective | t’ | tʃ’ | cʼ | k’ | kʷ’ | ||||
| voiceless | p | pʷ | t | tʃ | c | k | kʷ | ʔ | ʔʷ | |
| voiced | b | bʷ | d | dʒ | ɟ | ɡ | ɡʷ | |||
| Fricatives | voiceless | f | fʷ | s | ʃ | ç | x | xʷ | ||
| voiced | (β) | z | ʒ | |||||||
| Nasals | m | mʷ | n | ɲ | ||||||
| Approximants | (l) | j | w | |||||||
| Rhotics | r | |||||||||
Sounds /b, n, mʷ/ when in lenited position are heard as [β, r̃, w̃].
Vowels
[ɨ] may be regarded as largely epenthetic and only marginally phonemic.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Inor language”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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