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Bari

Bari is a Nilotic language spoken in Uganda and South Sudan, by about 480 thousand people.

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Bari · 4.2°N 31.1°E

Bari is the Nilotic language of the Karo people, spoken over large areas of Central Equatoria state in South Sudan, across the northwest corner of Uganda, and into the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bari is spoken by several distinct tribes: the Bari people themselves, the Pojulu, Kakwa, Nyangwara, Mundari, and Kuku. Each has its own dialect. The language is therefore sometimes called Karo or Kutuk ('mother tongue') rather than Bari.

Bari is a tone language. It has vowel harmony, subject–verb–object word order, and agglutinative verbal morphology with some suppletion. A very competent dictionary and grammar were published in the 1930s, but are very difficult to find today. More recently, a dissertation has been published on Bari tonal phonology, and another dissertation on Bari syntax is available.

From Wikipedia · Bari language · CC BY-SA 4.0

Written down

Ŋutu liŋ a yuŋwe kana, jojo i to’diri ko ’dekesi ko ti se tokitaki ko ’börik ko mulökötyo lo toluŋaseran. Se a ’doka ko denet na kulya na’but ko narok.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR in Unicode).

Words in Bari

MeaningWordRomanization
womannakwan
personNutu7*
namekaran*
eyekoNa*
earsuot*
nosekume*
toothkele*
tongueNadap*
handkonin*
bloodrima*
bonekuyutio*
skinborikot*
kneekoNu*
breastkinat*
livermu5et*
waterpioŋ
firekimaN*
sunkoloN*
starkasirokoti*
stoneNurupit*
mountainmara*
treekodini*
leafkoropoti*
nighttukeaTa*
dogdioN*
fishsumuti*
lousesirotat*
onegeleN*
twomurak*
Inan*

* in the simplified ASJP transcription

Most similar languages

Vocabulary

Vocabulary compares 40 basic words (ASJP); grammar compares 195 features (Grambank). Similar is not always related.

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Glottolog · bari1284 · Wikipedia (English) · Ethnologue · bfa