Suri language

Suri (Churi, Dhuri, Shuri, Shuro), is a Surmic language spoken in the West Omo Zone of the South West Ethiopia Peoples' Region in Ethiopia, to the South Sudan border by the Suri. The language has over 80% lexical similarity to Mursi.^[3] The language is often referred to by another form of its name, Surma, after which the Surmic branch of Eastern Sudanic is named, but that form is frequently used for the three related languages spoken by the Surma people: Suri, Mursi, and Me'en.

Suri
Surma
Native to	Ethiopia
Region	West Omo Zone
Ethnicity	Suri, Tirma
Native speakers	27,000 (2007 census)[1]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic? Southern Eastern? Surmic South Surmic Southeast Surmic Pastoral Surmic Tirma–Chai–Mursi Suri
Dialects	Tirma Chai
Writing system	Latin[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3	suq
Glottolog	suri1267
ELP	Suri

Suri is spoken in two dialect by two nationalities, the Tirma (Tirmaga, Cirma, Dirma, Terema, Terna, Tid, Tirima, Tirmagi) and the Chai (Caci, Cai).

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless		t	c	k	(ʔ)
	voiced	b	d	ɟ	g
	implosive	ɓ	ɗ	ʄ	ɠ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʃ		h
	voiced		z
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Flap/Trill			ɾ ~ r
Lateral			l
Approximant		w		j

• /ɗ/ may also be heard as a retroflex implosive [ᶑ] among the Chai dialect.
• /ʃ/ variant of [c] among speakers in the Tirmaga dialect. In the Chai dialect, it is heard as a separate phoneme.
• /ɾ/ can be heard as a trill [r] in word-final positions.
• /b, ɡ/ can be heard as [β, ɣ] in intervocalic positions.
• Implosives /ɓ, ɗ/ are heard as plosive sounds [p, t] in pre-consonantal and word-final positions.
• Sounds /b, ɟ, ɡ/ are devoiced as [p, c, k] pre-consonantal word-final.
• Some speakers of the Chai dialect may pronounce /s, z/ as dental fricatives [θ, ð].
• /j/ can be heard as a fricative [ð] among older speakers in different positions.
• A glottal stop [ʔ] may be heard in word-final position in connected speech.^[4]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

• /i, u/ can be heard as [ɪ, ʊ] in closed syllables.^[5]