| Also Known As: Majang Language,Masongo,Majanjiro,Ato Majanger-onk,Ato Majang,Tama,Masango,Ojanjur,Ajo,Mesengo
Description:
The Majang language is spoken by the Majangir people of Ethiopia. Although it is a member of the Surmic cluster, this language is the most isolated one in that cluster (Fleming 1983). A language survey has shown that dialect variation from north to south is minor and does not seriously impede communication
Vowel length is distinctive in Majang, so all vowels come in pairs of long and short, such as goopan 'punishment' and gopan 'road'. As a Nilo-Saharan language, there are two sets of [+ATR] and [-ATR] vowels in the language, resulting in a system with nine vowels. Moges claims a tenth vowel ɐ.
Bender also claims that the glottal stop [ʔ] needs to be treated as a phoneme of Majang though Unseth refutes this.
Two tones distinguish meaning in Majang, on both the word level and the grammatical level: táŋ (higher tone) 'cow', tàŋ (lower tone) 'abscess'.
The language has markers to indicate three different past tenses (close, mid, far past) and two future tenses (near and farther).
The language has a wide variety of suffixes, but almost no prefixes. Though its use is limited to a handful of roots, there are a few words that preserve vestiges of the archaic causative prefix i-, a prefix..... full article at Wikipedia |
