Loading AI tools
Plateau language spoken in Nigeria From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Kyoli or Cori (Chori) language is a Plateau language spoken in Southern Kaduna State, Nigeria.
People | Kwoli |
---|---|
Language | Kyoli |
It is spoken in the northeast of Nok in Jaba Local Government Area (LGA), Kaduna State. The speakers prefer to spell the name of their language as Kyoli, which is pronounced [kjoli] or [çjoli]. The ethnic group is referred to as Kwoli.
There are about 7,000-8,000 Kyoli speakers living in the two village clusters of Hal-Kyoli and Bobang. Bobang is the cultural center of the Kyoli-speaking area. Bobang village cluster consists of the five hamlets of Bobang, Fadek, Akoli, Hagong, and Nyamten. Hal-Kyoli village is situated by itself. All of the Kwoli villages surround the foot of Egu-Kyoli Hill, which rises more than 240 meters above the villages.[1]
Cori is known for having six distinct levels of tone, too many to transcribe using the International Phonetic Alphabet, which allows five. However, there are only three underlying tones: 1 (top), 4 (mid), and 6 (bottom), which are all that need to be written for literacy. Most cases of Tone 2 (high) are a result of tone sandhi, with 4 becoming 2 before 1. Tones 3 (mid-high) and 5 (low) can be analysed as contour tones, with underlying /1͡6/ realised as [3] and /2͡6/ realised as [5].
In order to transcribe the surface tones without numerals (which are ambiguous), an extra diacritic is needed, as is common for four-level languages in Central America:
Kyoli numerals in different dialects:[1]
No. | English | Bobang dialect | Hal-Kyoli dialect |
---|---|---|---|
1 | one | zìní | zìní |
2 | two | fɑ́lì | fɑ́lì |
3 | three | tɑ́r | tɑ́r |
4 | four | nɑ̀ŋ | nɑ̀ŋ |
5 | five | tû | to |
6 | six | fʷùín | fʷùín |
7 | seven | tofaːl | tofaːl |
8 | eight | nɑ̀naŋ | nɑ̀naŋ |
9 | nine | nbǒmkùp | nbǒmkùp |
10 | ten | sók | sɔ́k |
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.