Kissi language
| Kissi | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone |
|
Native speakers
|
(530,000 cited 1991–1995) |
|
Niger–Congo
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either: kss – Southern Kissi kqs – Northern Kissi |
| Glottolog | kiss1245 |
| Linguasphere | 94-BAB-a (Kisi, incl. 94-BAB-aa Kisi-N. & 94-BAB-ab Kisi-S.) |
Kissi (or Kisi) is a Mel language of West Africa, closely related to Temne of Sierra Leone. There are two dialects, northern and southern, and both are tonal languages. The northern dialect is spoken in Guinea and in Sierra Leone. In its northern form, it often uses loanwords from the Malinke and the Mende languages. The southern dialect is spoken in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The two dialects are notably different, but are closely related.
In Guinea, the main places Kissi is spoken are the cities of Kissidougou and Guéckédou and their préfectures.
Note that this is the new orthography. The old one was used in the Kissi New Testament (1986) and many documents of the time of Sekou Toure (the first President of Guinea).
Kissidougou dialects preserve a distinction between /r/ and /l/ phonemes that have been merged as allophones in dialects south of Guéckédou. For instance, "la huŋ" means exactly the same as "ra huŋ". Also, "Thank you" is realized as "barika" around Kissidougou and "balika" south of Guéckédou.
Gb / gb, the voiced labial-velar plosive IPA: [ɡ͡b] is a sound that doesn't exist in European languages. It is pronounced like a simultaneous [g] (as in go) and a [b] (as in bow). This sound occurs in words such as:
As you can already see from these examples, verbs aren't conjugated like English verbs, but they are inflected by tone.
Definite and indefinite articles do not exist in Kissi, so "muɛi" means "the knife" as well as "a knife". If an object has to be defined (because there are more than one, for example), "this" is used:
example: muɛi coŋ - this knife
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