| Kom | |
|---|---|
| Itaŋikom | |
| Native to | Cameroon |
| Region | North-West Province |
| Native speakers | 210,000 (2005) |
| Language family | Niger–Congo? |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bkm |
| Glottolog | komc1235 |
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The Kom language (also Itaŋikom) is the language spoken by the Kom people in Northwest Province in Cameroon. It is classified as a Central Ring language of the Grassfields, Southern Bantoid languages in the Niger-Congo language family. Kom is a tonal language with three tones.
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Palatal | Labial- velar |
Velar | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | b | t | d | c | ɟ | k | ɡ | |||||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ɣ | |||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||||||
| Approximant | j | w | ||||||||||
| Lateral | l | |||||||||||
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | y | ɨ | u |
| Close-mid | e | œ | o | |
| Open | æ | a | ||
Orthography
Kom uses a 29-character Latin-script orthography based on the General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages. It contains 20 single characters from the ISO set, six digraphs, and three special characters: barred I (Ɨɨ), eng (Ŋŋ), and an apostrophe (’). The digraphs ae and oe are also written as ligatures æ and œ, respectively.
| Letters | a | ae | b | ch | d | e | f | g | gh | i | ɨ | j | ’ | k | l | m | n | ŋ | ny | o | oe | s | t | u | ue | v | w | y | z |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IPA | /a/ | /æ/ | /b/ | /c/ | /d/ | /e/ | /f/ | /g/ | /ɣ/ | /i/ | /ɨ/ | /ɟ/ | /ʔ/ | /k/ | /l/ | /m/ | /n/ | /ŋ/ | /ɲ/ | /o/ | /œ/ | /s/ | /t/ | /u/ | /y/ | /v/ | /w/ | /j/ | /z/ |
The orthography is mostly phonemic, although the characters ae, oe, ue, and ’ represent allophonic variations: the three vowel digraphs are the product of vowel coalescence, and the apostrophe represents the glottal stop, a syllable-final variant of /k/.
Although Kom has eight phonetic tones, only two are marked in writing: the low tone is written with a grave accent (◌̀) over the vowel (e.g. kàe "four"), and the high-low falling tone is written with a circumflex (◌̂) over the vowel (e.g. kâf "armpit").
References
- Kom at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Shultz, George (1997). Kom Language Grammar Sketch Part 1 (PDF). Yaoundé: Société Internationale de Linguistique (SIL).
- ^ Shultz, George (June 1993). Notes on the Phonology of the Kom Language (PDF). Yaoundé: Société Internationale de Linguistique.
- ^ Kawuldim, Kimbi Paul (2008). Relativization in Kom (PDF). Nairobi: Nairoby Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. p. 17.
- ^ Chia, Emmanuel N.; Kimbi, Joseph C. (1992). Guide to the Kom Alphabet: Kom Language Reading and Writing Book (PDF). Yaoundé: Société Internationale de Linguistique.
Bibliography
- Shultz, George, 1997a, Kom Language Grammar Sketch Part 1, SIL Cameroon
- Shultz, George, 1997b, Notes on Discourse features of Kom Narrative Texts, SIL Cameroon
- Jones, Randy, compiler. 2001. Provisional Kom - English lexcion. Yaoundé, Cameroon: SIL
External links
| Grassfields languages | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring |
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| Eastern Grassfields |
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| Momo | |||||||||||||
| Others | |||||||||||||
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