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

Notes

1. Budu at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
3. Koehler, Loren S. (1995). An Underspecification Approach To Budu Vowel Harmony. Ann Arbor: UMI.
4. Lojenga, Constance K. (1994). Kibudu: A Bantu Language with nine Vowels. Africana Linguistica XI: Tervuren. pp. 127–133.