Budu language

For the language spoken in China, see Budu language (China). For the language of Mali, see Budu Dogon.

Ɨbʉdhʉ, also called Budu, is a Bantu language spoken by the Budu people in the Wamba Territory in the Orientale Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its orthography uses the special characters ɨ, ʉ, ɛ and ɔ, as well as modifier letters colon ꞉ and equal sign ꞊ for grammatical tone, marking past and future tense, respectively.

Budu
Ɨbʉdhʉ
Native to	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Region	Orientale Province
Ethnicity	Budu
Native speakers	(180,000 cited 1991)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Southern Bantoid Bantu (Zone D.30) Nyali (Budu–Ndaka) Budu
Language codes
ISO 639-3	buu
Glottolog	budu1250
Guthrie code	D.332[2]

A variety of this language is called Matta and is spoken locally both north and south of Maboma.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	(Alveolo-) palatal	Velar	Labio- velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	c	k
	voiced	b	d	ɟ	ɡ
	prenasal	ᵐb	ⁿd	ᶮɟ	ᵑɡ
	implosive	ɓ	ɗ	ʄ
Affricate	voiceless			t͡ɕ		k͡p
	voiced			d͡ʑ		ɡ͡b
	prenasal			ᶮd͡ʑ		ᵑᵐɡ͡b
Fricative	voiceless	f	s				h
	voiced	v	z
	prenasal	ᶬv
Nasal		m	n	ɲ
Approximant			(l)	j		w

• [z] only occurs in the Koya dialect of Budu.
• /h/ can be heard as either a voiced [ɦ] or voiceless [h] among different speakers.^[3]
• /ɗ/ can be heard as [l] or a tap [ɾ] in free variation.^[4]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Near-close	ɪ		ʊ
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a