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Kyoli language

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Plateau language spoken in Nigeria
Kyoli
Cori
Native toJaba LGA, Nigeria
RegionKaduna State
Native speakers7,000-8,000 (2020)
Language familyNiger–Congo?
Language codes
ISO 639-3cry
Glottologcori1240
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
PeopleKwoli
LanguageKyoli

The Kyoli or Cori (Chori) language is a Plateau language spoken in Southern Kaduna State, Nigeria.

Overview

It is spoken in the northeast of Nok in Jaba Local Government Area (LGA), Kaduna State. The speakers prefer to spell the name of their language as Kyoli, which is pronounced or . The ethnic group is referred to as Kwoli.

There are about 7,000-8,000 Kyoli speakers living in the two village clusters of Hal-Kyoli and Bobang. Bobang is the cultural center of the Kyoli-speaking area. Bobang village cluster consists of the five hamlets of Bobang, Fadek, Akoli, Hagong, and Nyamten. Hal-Kyoli village is situated by itself. All of the Kwoli villages surround the foot of Egu-Kyoli Hill, which rises more than 240 meters above the villages.

Tone

Cori is known for having six distinct levels of tone, too many to transcribe using the International Phonetic Alphabet, which allows five. However, there are only three underlying tones: 1 (top), 4 (mid), and 6 (bottom), which are all that need to be written for literacy. Most cases of Tone 2 (high) are a result of tone sandhi, with 4 becoming 2 before 1. Tones 3 (mid-high) and 5 (low) can be analysed as contour tones, with underlying /1͡6/ realised as and /2͡6/ realised as .

In order to transcribe the surface tones without numerals (which are ambiguous), an extra diacritic is needed, as is common for four-level languages in Central America:

1 (top)
2 (high)
3 (mid-high)
4 (mid)
5 (low)
6 (bottom)

Numerals

Kyoli numerals in different dialects:

No. English Bobang dialect Hal-Kyoli dialect
1 one zìní zìní
2 two fɑ́lì fɑ́lì
3 three tɑ́r tɑ́r
4 four nɑ̀ŋ nɑ̀ŋ
5 five to
6 six fʷùín fʷùín
7 seven tofaːl tofaːl
8 eight nɑ̀naŋ nɑ̀naŋ
9 nine nbǒmkùp nbǒmkùp
10 ten sók sɔ́k

References

  1. ^ Decker, Ken, John Muniru, Julius Dabet, Benard Abraham and Jonah Innocent. 2020. A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori) Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria. SIL Electronic Survey Reports.

Further reading

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