Buwal language

Buwal, also known as Ma Buwal, Bual, or Gadala, is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Cameroon in Far North Province in and around Gadala.^[1]

Buwal
Gadala
Native to	Cameroon
Region	Far North Province
Native speakers	10,000 (2004)[1]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Chadic Biu–Mandara Daba (A.7) North Buwal
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bhs
Glottolog	buwa1243

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Lateral alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labialized velar	Labial-velar
Nasal	m	n			ŋ	ŋʷ	ŋm
Voiceless plosive	p	t			k	kʷ	kp
Voiced plosive	b	d			ɡ	ɡʷ	ɡb
Prenasalized plosive	ᵐb	ⁿd			ᵑɡ	ᵑɡʷ	ᵑᵐɡb
Implosive	ɓ	ɗ
Voiceless affricate		ts
Voiced affricate		dz
Prenasalized affricate		ⁿdz
Voiceless fricative	f	s	ɬ		x	xʷ
Voiced fricative	v	z	ɮ		ɣ	ɣʷ
Flap	ⱱ	ɾ
Approximant			l	j		w

The labiodental flap /ⱱ/ is marginal, only occurring in two native Buwal words. The labial-velar plosives are also marginal; in particular, /kp/ only occurs in one word, the ideophone kpaŋ.

Buwal has the vowels /ə a/, which can occur in high, middle, or low tone. Each vowel has a variety of phonetic realizations. /ə/ can occur as [i u ɪ ʏ ʊ], and /a/ can occur as [e o ɛ œ ɐ ɔ]. The schwa can be analyzed as a solely epenthetic vowel. These vowels occur as rounded allophones when adjacent to a labialized consonant, and as front vowels when the word is palatalized.

Palatalization in Buwal occurs across an entire word, and also affects the affricate consonants /ts dz ⁿdz/, which surface as [tʃ dʒ ⁿdʒ] in a palatalized word. As a result, all of the vowels within a single word are either front or back, producing vowel harmony. An example of this contrast is between [mɐ̄ⁿdʊ́wɐ́n] 'rat' (underlyingly /māⁿdwán/), which is non-palatalized, and [mɛ̀vɛ̄ɗvɛ̄ɗɛ̄ŋ] (underlyingly /màvāɗvāɗāŋ/) 'turtle', which is palatalized. This process does not affect loanwords, e.g. [nɛ̀bɐ̄m] 'oil' (from Fulfulde nebbam) or [lɛ̀kʷól] 'school' (from French l'école). Some loanwords have been modified to accommodate Buwal phonology, e.g. [sɐ́j] 'tea', from Fulfulde sha'i.^[2]

Notes

1. Buwal at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Viljoen, Melanie Helen (2013). A grammatical description of the Buwal language (Ph.D. thesis). La Trobe University. hdl:1959.9/513436.