Northwest Songhay:
69-798: The Dallol Bosso ( Zarma : Boboye ) is one of two major seasonal river valleys in southwest Niger . The Dallol Bosso valley runs from the Azawagh area in the Sahara west and south through the Dosso Region where it reaches the Niger River valley. Dallol is the Djerma language equivalent of the Arabic Wadi or the Hausa Kori : an ancient river valley which carries surface water in
138-479: A different meaning and with stress on both words, but that descriptive phrase is then not usually considered a compound: bláck bírd (any bird that is black) and bláckbird (a specific bird species ) and páper bág (a bag made of paper) and páper bag (very rarely used for a bag for carrying newspapers but is often also used for a bag made of paper). Some languages are described as having both primary stress and secondary stress . A syllable with secondary stress
207-502: A given syllable in a word. The position of word stress in a word may depend on certain general rules applicable in the language or dialect in question, but in other languages, it must be learned for each word, as it is largely unpredictable, for example in English . In some cases, classes of words in a language differ in their stress properties; for example, loanwords into a language with fixed stress may preserve stress placement from
276-553: A handful of valleys which once carried ancient tributaries of the Niger. Dallol Bosso runs some 300 kilometres (190 mi), ranging between 5–15 kilometres (3.1–9.3 mi) across. Its western escarpment runs along a geological fault near where it reaches the Niger. 13°51′40″N 3°05′09″E / 13.86111°N 3.08583°E / 13.86111; 3.08583 Zarma language Eastern Songhay: Zarma ( Zarma Ciine/Sanni ; Ajami : زَرْمَ ݘِينٜ / زَرْمَ سَنِّ )
345-412: A higher level than the individual word – namely within a prosodic unit . It may involve a certain natural stress pattern characteristic of a given language, but may also involve the placing of emphasis on particular words because of their relative importance (contrastive stress). An example of a natural prosodic stress pattern is that described for French above; stress is placed on the final syllable of
414-438: A labiodental nasal [ ɱ ] before ⟨f⟩ . Tone is not written unless the word is ambiguous. Then, the standard IPA diacritics are used: bá ("to be a lot": high tone), bà ("to share": low tone), bâ ("to want" or "even": falling tone) and bǎ ("to be better": rising tone). However, the meaning is almost always unambiguous in the context so the words are usually all written ba . Table below illustrates
483-417: A more peripheral articulation. Stress may be realized to varying degrees on different words in a sentence; sometimes, the difference is minimal between the acoustic signals of stressed and those of unstressed syllables. Those particular distinguishing features of stress, or types of prominence in which particular features are dominant, are sometimes referred to as particular types of accent: dynamic accent in
552-632: A particular syllable, such as the penultimate (e.g. Polish ) or the first (e.g. Finnish ). Other languages, like English and Russian , have lexical stress , where the position of stress in a word is not predictable in that way but lexically encoded. Sometimes more than one level of stress, such as primary stress and secondary stress , may be identified. Stress is not necessarily a feature of all languages: some, such as French and Mandarin Chinese , are sometimes analyzed as lacking lexical stress entirely. The stress placed on words within sentences
621-477: A roughly constant rate and non-stressed syllables are shortened to accommodate that, which contrasts with languages that have syllable timing (e.g. Spanish ) or mora timing (e.g. Japanese ), whose syllables or moras are spoken at a roughly constant rate regardless of stress. It is common for stressed and unstressed syllables to behave differently as a language evolves. For example, in the Romance languages ,
690-617: A stressed syllable is pronounced a bit more strongly, and the vowel in the preceding syllable is weakened. Only emphasized words have a stressed syllable. There is no change of tone for a stressed syllable. Zarma is primarily written in either Latin alphabet or Arabic alphabet ( Ajami ). Zarma as well as other Songhay languages , and other indigenous languages of the Sahel such as Fula and Hausa have been written in Arabic alphabet for centuries. The tradition of writing in Arabic dates back to
759-442: A string of words (or if that is a schwa , the next-to-final syllable). A similar pattern is found in English (see § Levels of stress above): the traditional distinction between (lexical) primary and secondary stress is replaced partly by a prosodic rule stating that the final stressed syllable in a phrase is given additional stress. (A word spoken alone becomes such a phrase, hence such prosodic stress may appear to be lexical if
SECTION 10
#1732772803620828-504: A vowel changes from a stressed to an unstressed position. In English, unstressed vowels may reduce to schwa -like vowels, though the details vary with dialect (see stress and vowel reduction in English ). The effect may be dependent on lexical stress (for example, the unstressed first syllable of the word photographer contains a schwa / f ə ˈ t ɒ ɡ r ə f ər / , whereas the stressed first syllable of photograph does not /ˈfoʊtəˌɡræf -ɡrɑːf/ ), or on prosodic stress (for example,
897-647: Is connected with alternations in vowels and/or consonants , which means that vowel quality differs by whether vowels are stressed or unstressed. There may also be limitations on certain phonemes in the language in which stress determines whether they are allowed to occur in a particular syllable or not. That is the case with most examples in English and occurs systematically in Russian , such as за́мок ( [ˈzamək] , ' castle ' ) vs. замо́к ( [zɐˈmok] , ' lock ' ); and in Portuguese , such as
966-595: Is gá , not to be confused with the incompletive aspect marker or the emphasized completive marker.) The connector ká implies that the second verb is a result of the first or that the first is the reason or cause of the second: ka ga ŋwa , "come (in order to) eat." A large number of idiomatic expressions are expressed with it: sintin ga ... or sintin ka means "to begin to ...", ban ga ... means "to have already ...", ba ga ... means "to be about to ..., gay ga ... means "it's been awhile since ...", haw ga ... means "to purposely ..." and so on. Zarma's normal word order
1035-414: Is subject–object–verb . The object is normally placed before the verb but may be placed after the verb for emphasis, and a few common verbs require the object after them. Unlike English, which places prepositions before a noun, Zarma has postpositions , which are placed after the noun: fuwo ra (in the house), fuwo jine (in front of the house). When two nouns are placed together, the first noun modifies
1104-475: Is a tonal language , stressed syllables have been found to have tones that are realized with a relatively large swing in fundamental frequency , and unstressed syllables typically have smaller swings. (See also Stress in Standard Chinese .) Stressed syllables are often perceived as being more forceful than non-stressed syllables. Word stress, or sometimes lexical stress , is the stress placed on
1173-508: Is a proverb in Zarma: da if curo bird fo one hẽ, cry, a-fo NFP -one mana Stress (linguistics) In linguistics , and particularly phonology , stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence . That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as increased loudness and vowel length , full articulation of
1242-452: Is a special modal marker, ka or ga , according to the dialect, to indicate the completive aspect with emphasis on the subject. Different markers are used to indicate a negative sentence. Linguists do not agree on the tone for ga . Some say that it is high before a low tone and low before a high tone. There are several words in Zarma to translate the English "to be". The defective verb tí
1311-466: Is approximately like English ch but more palatalized. The palatal nasal ⟨ ɲ ⟩ is spelled ⟨ny⟩ in older works. Long consonants are written with double letters; ⟨rr⟩ is a trilled [ r ] . Long vowels are sometimes but inconsistently written with double letter. In older works, /c/ was spelled ⟨ky⟩ or ⟨ty⟩ . Both ⟨n⟩ and ⟨m⟩ are pronounced as
1380-410: Is called sentence stress or prosodic stress . That is one of the three components of prosody , along with rhythm and intonation . It includes phrasal stress (the default emphasis of certain words within phrases or clauses ), and contrastive stress (used to highlight an item, a word or part of a word, that is given particular focus). There are various ways in which stress manifests itself in
1449-439: Is called variable stress accent . Since stress can be realised through a wide range of phonetic properties, such as loudness, vowel length, and pitch (which are also used for other linguistic functions), it is difficult to define stress solely phonetically. The stress placed on syllables within words is called word stress . Some languages have fixed stress , meaning that the stress on virtually any multisyllable word falls on
SECTION 20
#17327728036201518-428: Is common. Nouns may be singular or plural. There are also three "forms" that indicate whether the noun is indefinite, definite or demonstrative. "Form" and number are indicated conjointly by an enclitic on the noun phrase. The singular definite enclitic is -ǒ or -ǎ. Some authors always write the ending with a rising tone mark even if it is not ambiguous and even if it is not truly a rising tone. The other endings are in
1587-436: Is conditioned by the weight of particular syllables. They are said to have a regular stress rule. Statements about the position of stress are sometimes affected by the fact that when a word is spoken in isolation, prosodic factors (see below) come into play, which do not apply when the word is spoken normally within a sentence. French words are sometimes said to be stressed on the final syllable, but that can be attributed to
1656-596: Is even represented in writing using diacritical marks, for example in the Spanish words c é lebre and celebr é . Sometimes, stress is fixed for all forms of a particular word, or it can fall on different syllables in different inflections of the same word. In such languages with phonemic stress, the position of stress can serve to distinguish otherwise identical words. For example, the English words insight ( / ˈ ɪ n s aɪ t / ) and incite ( / ɪ n ˈ s aɪ t / ) are distinguished in pronunciation only by
1725-410: Is often used like English "some". Ay no leemuyaŋ means "Give me some oranges." Usually, the singular forms are used if the plurality is indicated by a number or other contextual clue, especially for the indefinite form: Soboro ga ba ("There are a lot of mosquitoes"); ay zanka hinkǎ ("my two children"); hasaraw hinko kulu ra ("in both of these catastrophes"). There is no gender or case in Zarma so
1794-554: Is one of the Songhay languages . It is the leading indigenous language of the southwestern lobe of the West African nation of Niger , where the Niger River flows and the capital city, Niamey , is located. Zarma is the second-most common language in the country, after Hausa , which is spoken in south-central Niger. With over 6 million speakers, Zarma is easily the most widely spoken Songhay language. In earlier decades, Zarma
1863-405: Is one of the most common words in Zarma. It has no aspect or negative form and is placed after a noun phrase, sometimes for emphasis: Ni do no ay ga koy ("It's to your house I'm going"). Other words, such as gòró , cíyà , tíyà and bárà are much rarer and usually express ideas, such as the subjunctive, which gǒ and tí cannot handle. Participles can be formed with the suffix -ànté , which
1932-464: Is phonemically distinctive. There are a number of combinations of a vowel with a semivowel /w/ or /j/ , the semivowel being initial or final. The combinations /ɡe/, /ɡi/, /ke/ and /ki/ usually have some palatal quality to them and may even be interchangeable with /ɟe/, /ɟi/, /ce/ and /ci/ in the speech of many people. All consonants may be short, and all consonants except /c/, /h/, /f/ and /z/ may be long. (In some dialects, long /f/ exists in
2001-595: Is recognized and unstressed syllables are phonemically distinguished for vowel reduction . They find that the multiple levels posited for English, whether primary–secondary or primary–secondary–tertiary , are not phonetic stress (let alone phonemic ), and that the supposed secondary/tertiary stress is not characterized by the increase in respiratory activity associated with primary/secondary stress in English and other languages. (For further detail see Stress and vowel reduction in English .) Prosodic stress , or sentence stress , refers to stress patterns that apply at
2070-495: Is said to be accented or tonic ; the latter term does not imply that it carries phonemic tone . Other syllables or words are said to be unaccented or atonic . Syllables are frequently said to be in pretonic or post-tonic position, and certain phonological rules apply specifically to such positions. For instance, in American English , /t/ and /d/ are flapped in post-tonic position. In Mandarin Chinese , which
2139-411: Is similar in meaning to the past participle in English. It can also be added to quantities to form ordinal numbers and to some nouns to form adjectives. A sort of gerund can be formed by adding -yàŋ , which transforms the verb into a noun. There are many other suffixes that can make nouns out of verbs, but only -yàŋ works with all verbs. Two verbs can be related with the word ká . (In many dialects it
Dallol Bosso - Misplaced Pages Continue
2208-756: Is spoken include Tillaberi , Dosso , Niamey , Tahoua and Agadez . In Nigeria , where the Zarma people are usually referred to as Zabarma or Zabarmawa , they are located in bordering States such as Kebbi , near Nguru Road in Yobe State and communities in Niger State . The name Zabarmawa is derived from the Hausa language word for the Zarma people and the Songhai people . In Mali , where they are located in bordering Gao Region and Kidal Region ,
2277-405: Is stressed relative to unstressed syllables but not as strongly as a syllable with primary stress. As with primary stress, the position of secondary stress may be more or less predictable depending on language. In English, it is not fully predictable, but the different secondary stress of the words organization and accumulation (on the first and second syllable, respectively) is predictable due to
2346-493: Is used to equate two noun phrases, with the emphasized completive ka/ga , as in Ay ma ka ti Yakuba ("My name is Yakuba"). The existential gǒ (negative sí ) is not a verb (White-Kaba, 1994, calls it a "verboid") and has no aspect; it means "exist" and usually links a noun phrase to a descriptive term, such as a place, a price or a participle: A go fuwo ra ("She's in the house"). The predicative nô means "it is", "they are", etc. and
2415-467: The East and South Slavic languages , Lithuanian , Greek , as well as others, in which the position of stress in a word is not fully predictable, are said to have phonemic stress . Stress in these languages is usually truly lexical and must be memorized as part of the pronunciation of an individual word. In some languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan , Lakota and, to some extent, Italian, stress
2484-639: The prosodic stress , which is placed on the last syllable (unless it is a schwa in which case the stress is placed on the second-last syllable) of any string of words in that language. Thus, it is on the last syllable of a word analyzed in isolation. The situation is similar in Mandarin Chinese . French and Georgian (and, according to some authors, Mandarin Chinese) can be considered to have no real lexical stress. With some exceptions above, languages such as Germanic languages , Romance languages ,
2553-446: The vowel , and changes in tone . The terms stress and accent are often used synonymously in that context but are sometimes distinguished. For example, when emphasis is produced through pitch alone, it is called pitch accent , and when produced through length alone, it is called quantitative accent . When caused by a combination of various intensified properties, it is called stress accent or dynamic accent ; English uses what
2622-700: The Arabic (Ajami) alphabet for Zarma, based on UNESCO.BREDA report on standardization of Arabic script in published in 1987 in Bamako . Arabic alphabet for Songhay languages in Niger differs in 5 characters from that of Mali . Otherwise, the two orthographies are the same, especially in how vowels are written. Below is a sample text, Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . There are many suffixes in Zarma. There are very few prefixes, and only one ( a-/i- before adjectives and numbers)
2691-556: The arrival of Islam via merchants of the Trans-Saharan trade , as early as the 12th century. The tradition of Arabic script in the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa came to be known as Ajami . Ajami has its own unique characteristics across various languages that differ from the Perso-Arabic tradition or Jawi tradition of Southeast Asia for example. Latin alphabet came to be used for Zarma and other indigenous languages of
2760-488: The case of loudness, pitch accent in the case of pitch (although that term usually has more specialized meanings), quantitative accent in the case of length, and qualitative accent in the case of differences in articulation. They can be compared to the various types of accents in music theory . In some contexts, the term stress or stress accent specifically means dynamic accent (or as an antonym to pitch accent in its various meanings). A prominent syllable or word
2829-437: The fact that the stress falls on the first syllable in the former and on the second syllable in the latter. Examples from other languages include German Tenor ( [ˈteːnoːɐ̯] ' gist of message ' vs. [teˈnoːɐ̯] ' tenor voice ' ); and Italian ancora ( [ˈaŋkora] ' anchor ' vs. [aŋˈkoːra] ' more, still, yet, again ' ). In many languages with lexical stress, it
Dallol Bosso - Misplaced Pages Continue
2898-628: The first syllable in American English , with a secondary stress on the "tor" syllable ( láboratory often pronounced "lábratory"). The Spanish word video is stressed on the first syllable in Spain ( v í deo ) but on the second syllable in the Americas ( vid e o ). The Portuguese words for Madagascar and the continent Oceania are stressed on the third syllable in European Portuguese ( Madag á scar and Oce â nia ), but on
2967-480: The fourth syllable in Brazilian Portuguese ( Madagasc a r and Ocean i a ). With very few exceptions, English compound words are stressed on their first component. Even the exceptions, such as mankínd , are instead often stressed on the first component by some people or in some kinds of English. The same components as those of a compound word are sometimes used in a descriptive phrase with
3036-409: The main stress was on the penultimate syllable. An operational definition of word stress may be provided by the stress "deafness" paradigm. The idea is that if listeners perform poorly on reproducing the presentation order of series of stimuli that minimally differ in the position of phonetic prominence (e.g. [númi]/[numí] ), the language does not have word stress. The task involves a reproduction of
3105-436: The meaning of a sentence; for example: I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.) I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.) I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.) I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took one of several, or I didn't take the specific test that would have been implied.) I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took something else.) I didn't take
3174-453: The name is usually spelled Djerma . In countries where no other Songhai languages are spoken, Zarma is also simply referred to as Songhai or Songhay . Outside Niger, Nigeria and Mali, communities of speakers are found in the following other countries: There are ten vowels: the five oral vowels ( /a/ , /e/ , /i/ , /o/ , /u/ ) and their nasalized counterparts. There is slight variation, both allophonic and dialectal. Vowel length
3243-415: The order of stimuli as a sequence of key strokes, whereby key "1" is associated with one stress location (e.g. [númi] ) and key "2" with the other (e.g. [numí] ). A trial may be from two to six stimuli in length. Thus, the order [númi-númi-numí-númi] is to be reproduced as "1121". It was found that listeners whose native language was French performed significantly worse than Spanish listeners in reproducing
3312-525: The original Latin short vowels /e/ and /o/ have often become diphthongs when stressed. Since stress takes part in verb conjugation, that has produced verbs with vowel alternation in the Romance languages. For example, the Spanish verb volver (to return, come back) has the form v o lví in the past tense but v ue lvo in the present tense (see Spanish irregular verbs ). Italian shows
3381-439: The pronunciation of words is analyzed in a standalone context rather than within phrases.) Another type of prosodic stress pattern is quantity sensitivity – in some languages additional stress tends to be placed on syllables that are longer ( moraically heavy ). Prosodic stress is also often used pragmatically to emphasize (focus attention on) particular words or the ideas associated with them. Doing this can change or clarify
3450-547: The rainy season, but maintains subsurface water at other times, making it a magnet for human habitation. It has historically been a center of the Djerma people of Niger. Its sections are known by a number of local names, including Dallol Boboy near its mouth and Dallol Azawak in its northern sections. The valley spreads out as the Azawagh depression on the western shadow of the Aïr Mountains , contracting and feeding
3519-437: The reason why Persian listeners are stress "deaf" is that their accent locations arise postlexically. Persian thus lacks stress in the strict sense. Stress "deafness" has been studied for a number of languages, such as Polish or French learners of Spanish. The orthographies of some languages include devices for indicating the position of lexical stress. Some examples are listed below: Though not part of normal orthography,
SECTION 50
#17327728036203588-463: The region in the beginning of the 19th century with the arrival of European Christian Missionaries and colonial administrators. Table below illustrates the letters used in the Zarma Latin alphabet: Nasal vowels are written with a tilde or a following ⟨n⟩ or ⟨ŋ⟩ . Officially, the tilde should go under the vowel ( so̰ho̰ ), but many current works write the tilde over
3657-493: The same phenomenon but with /o/ alternating with /uo/ instead. That behavior is not confined to verbs; note for example Spanish v ie nto ' wind ' from Latin v e ntum , or Italian f uo co ' fire ' from Latin f o cum . There are also examples in French, though they are less systematic : v ie ns from Latin venio where the first syllable was stressed, vs v e nir from Latin venire where
3726-518: The same stress of the verbs órganize and accúmulate . In some analyses, for example the one found in Chomsky and Halle's The Sound Pattern of English , English has been described as having four levels of stress: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary, but the treatments often disagree with one another. Peter Ladefoged and other phoneticians have noted that it is possible to describe English with only one degree of stress, as long as prosody
3795-427: The second, showing possession, purpose or description: Fati tirǎ (Fati's book), haŋyaŋ hari (drinking water), fu meeyo (the door of a house). The same construction occurs with a pronoun before a noun: ni baaba ("your father"). All other modifiers of a noun (adjectives, articles, numbers, demonstratives etc.) are placed after the noun: Ay baaba wura muusu boŋey ("My father's gold lion heads", Tersis, 1981). Here
3864-500: The source language, or the special pattern for Turkish placenames . In some languages, the placement of stress can be determined by rules. It is thus not a phonemic property of the word, because it can always be predicted by applying the rules. Languages in which the position of the stress can usually be predicted by a simple rule are said to have fixed stress . For example, in Czech , Finnish , Icelandic , Hungarian and Latvian ,
3933-454: The speech stream, and they depend to some extent on which language is being spoken. Stressed syllables are often louder than non-stressed syllables, and they may have a higher or lower pitch . They may also sometimes be pronounced longer . There are sometimes differences in place or manner of articulation . In particular, vowels in unstressed syllables may have a more central (or " neutral ") articulation, and those in stressed syllables have
4002-502: The stress almost always comes on the first syllable of a word. In Armenian the stress is on the last syllable of a word. In Quechua , Esperanto , and Polish , the stress is almost always on the penult (second-last syllable). In Macedonian , it is on the antepenult (third-last syllable). Other languages have stress placed on different syllables but in a predictable way, as in Classical Arabic and Latin , where stress
4071-654: The stress patterns by key strokes. The explanation is that Spanish has lexically contrastive stress, as evidenced by the minimal pairs like topo ( ' mole ' ) and topó ( ' [he/she/it] met ' ), while in French, stress does not convey lexical information and there is no equivalent of stress minimal pairs as in Spanish. An important case of stress "deafness" relates to Persian. The language has generally been described as having contrastive word stress or accent as evidenced by numerous stem and stem-clitic minimal pairs such as /mɒhi/ [mɒ.hí] ( ' fish ' ) and /mɒh-i/ [mɒ́.hi] ( ' some month ' ). The authors argue that
4140-401: The subjunctive ( afiri ŋwaaray nufa ). (Beginning grammars for foreigners sometimes inaccurately call the first two "past and present tenses".) There is also an imperative and a continuing or progressive construction. Lack of a modal marker indicates either the affirmative completive aspect (if there is a subject and no object) or the singular affirmative imperative (if there is no subject). There
4209-495: The syllables of tomorrow would be small compared to the differences between the syllables of dinner , the emphasized word. In these emphasized words, stressed syllables such as din in din ner are louder and longer. They may also have a different fundamental frequency, or other properties. The main stress within a sentence, often found on the last stressed word, is called the nuclear stress . In many languages, such as Russian and English , vowel reduction may occur when
SECTION 60
#17327728036204278-468: The table below. The definite and the demonstrative endings replace any final vowel. See Hamani (1980) for a discussion on when to add -ǒ or -ǎ as well as other irregularities. See Tersis (1981) for a discussion of the complex changes in tone that may occur. For example, súsúbày means "morning" (indefinite singular); súsúbǎ means "the morning" (definite singular); and súsúbô means "this morning" (demonstrative singular). The indefinite plural -yáŋ ending
4347-401: The test yesterday . (I took it some other day.) As in the examples above, stress is normally transcribed as italics in printed text or underlining in handwriting. In English, stress is most dramatically realized on focused or accented words. For instance, consider the dialogue "Is it brunch tomorrow?" "No, it's dinner tomorrow." In it, the stress-related acoustic differences between
4416-435: The third-person singular pronoun a can mean "he", "she", "it", "her", "him", "his", "hers", "its", "one" or "one's", according to the context and its position in the sentence. Verbs do not have tenses and are not conjugated. There are at least three aspects for verbs that are indicated by a modal word before the verb and any object nouns. The aspects are the completive ( daahir gasu ), the incompletive ( daahir gasu si ) and
4485-477: The triplet sábia ( [ˈsaβjɐ] , ' wise woman ' ), sabia ( [sɐˈβiɐ] , ' knew ' ), sabiá ( [sɐˈβja] , ' thrush ' ). Dialects of the same language may have different stress placement. For instance, the English word laboratory is stressed on the second syllable in British English ( labóratory often pronounced "labóratry", the second o being silent), but
4554-527: The vowel ( sõhõ ). Also, v may be used in a few words of foreign origin, but many Zarma cannot pronounce it. Most of the letters are pronounced with the same values as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) , the exceptions being ⟨j⟩ [ ɟ ] (approximately English j but more palatalized), ⟨y⟩ [ j ] , ⟨r⟩ [ ɾ ] (a flap). The letter ⟨ c ⟩
4623-491: The word goffo .) Zarma is a tonal language with four tones: high, low, fall and rise. In Dosso, some linguists (such as Tersis) have observed a dipping (falling-rising) tone for certain words: ma ("the name"). Stress is generally unimportant in Zarma. According to Abdou Hamani (1980), two-syllable words are stressed on their first syllable unless that syllable is just a short vowel: a-, i- or u-. Three-syllable words have stress on their second syllable. The first consonant of
4692-464: The word of is pronounced with a schwa when it is unstressed within a sentence, but not when it is stressed). Many other languages, such as Finnish and the mainstream dialects of Spanish , do not have unstressed vowel reduction; in these languages vowels in unstressed syllables have nearly the same quality as those in stressed syllables. Some languages, such as English , are said to be stress-timed languages ; that is, stressed syllables appear at
4761-486: Was rendered Djerma , using French orthography, but it is usually now 'Zarma', the form that the Zarma people use in their language. Alternative names for Zarma are Djerma, Jerma, Dyabarma, Dyarma, Dyerma, Adzerma, Zabarma, Zarbarma, Zarmaci or Zerma. The majority of people who speak Zarma live in Southwestern Niger. It is also spoken in other parts of Niger and in neighbouring countries. Cities where Zarma
#619380