Korandje language
| Korandje | |
|---|---|
| Kwarandzyey | |
| Native to | Algeria |
| Region | Tabelbala, Béchar Province |
|
Native speakers
|
3,000 (2010) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | kora1291 |
|
|
Northwest Songhay:
Eastern Songhay:
Korandje (Kwaranje; kwạṛa n dzyəy, Arabic: البلبالية) is by far the most northerly of the Songhay languages. It is spoken around the oasis of Tabelbala by about 3000 people; its name literally means "village's language". While retaining a basically Songhay structure, it is extremely heavily influenced by Berber and Arabic; about 20% of the 100-word Swadesh list of basic vocabulary consists of loans from Arabic or Berber, and the proportion of the lexicon as a whole is considerably higher.
The only published studies of Korandje based on first-hand data are Cancel (1908), a 45-page article by a French lieutenant covering basic grammar and vocabulary and a couple of sample texts; Champault (1969), an anthropological study containing some incidental linguistically relevant materials such as sentences and rhymes; Tilmatine (1991, 1996), an article (published in German, then reworked in French) revisiting Cancel and Champault and adding about a page of new data recorded by the author; and Souag (2010a, 2010b), the former arguing the case for Western Berber loans in the lexicon, the latter studying the effect of contact with Berber and Arabic on its grammar.
No complete phonological study of Korandje, systematically justified by minimal pairs, has yet been made. According to Souag (2010), the vowel system consists of lax ə, ŭ [ʊ], ə̣̣ [ʌ] and tense a [a], i, u, ạ [ɑ], ụ [o], while the consonant system is as follows:
Items in brackets are not normally used by older speakers. A bilabial click is attested in one baby-talk word.
An earlier proposal by Nicolaï (1981), based on a very limited corpus of recordings provided by Champault, suggested a smaller phoneme inventory:
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