| Kumam | |
| Nativename: | Ikokolemu |
| States: | Uganda |
| Region: | Teso District |
| Ethnicity: | Kumam people |
| Date: | 2014 census |
| Ref: | e22 |
| Familycolor: | Nilo-Saharan |
| Fam2: | Eastern Sudanic? |
| Fam3: | Kir–Abbaian? |
| Fam4: | Nilotic |
| Fam5: | Western Nilotic |
| Fam6: | Luo |
| Fam7: | Southern |
| Fam8: | Lango–Kumam[1] |
| Iso3: | kdi |
| Glotto: | kuma1275 |
| Glottorefname: | Kumam |
Kumam is a language of the Southern Lwoo group spoken by the Kumam people of Uganda. It is estimated that the Kumam dialect has 82 percent lexical similarity with the Acholi dialect, 81 percent with the Lango dialect.[2]
| Stop | voiceless | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| voiced | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
| Fricative | (pronounced as /ink/) | (pronounced as /ink/) | ||||
| Lateral | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Trill | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
| Semivowel | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
Gemination can occur due to morphological processes, for example del 'skin' + -ná → dellá 'my skin'.[3]
Kumam has ten vowels, with a vowel harmony system based on presence or absence of advanced tongue root (ATR).
| [-ATR] | [+ATR] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Back | Front | Back | ||
| Close | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
| Mid | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |
| Open | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
Vowels have no distinction in length, except due to some morphological processes, for instance compensatory lengthening that occurs when applying the transitive infinitive suffix -nɔ: ted- 'cook' + -ne → *ted-do → teedo 'to cook'.
There exist six tones: low, high, falling, rising, downstep high and double downstep high.
| low | [à] | |
| high | [á] | |
| falling | [â] | |
| rising | [ǎ] | |
| downstep high | [!á] | |
| double downstep high | [!!á] |
Kumam exhibits tone sandhi in two ways. The first is the spreading of high tonemes rightwards to the following words beginning with a low tonemes, as in ɑbúké 'eyelash' + waŋ 'eye' → abúké wâŋ 'eyelash'. The second is when a floating high toneme is followed by a word beginning in a low toneme, where the floating tone is assigned to the following word and not the word bearing the floating tone: cogó 'bone' + rac 'bad' → cogo râc 'The bone is bad.'
Transitive stems are constructed by applying the suffix -ɔ (yɛŋ 'be satisfied' → yɛŋ-ɔ 'satisfy'). A subset of transitive verbs can have the suffix -ɛ́rɛ́ applied to form what Hieda calls a 'middle form' (nɛ́n-ɔ → nɛ́!nɛ́rɛ́ 'be seen').
Hello – yoga
How are you? –Itiye benyo (singular), Itiyenu benyo (plural)
Fine, and you? – Atiye ber, arai bon yin?
Fine – Atiye ber or just ber
What is your name? – Nying in en Ngai?
My name is ... – Nying ango en ...
Name --- Nying
Nice to see you. --- Apwoyo Neno in (also: Apwoyo Neno wun)
See you again --- Oneno bobo
Book – Itabo
Because – Pi Ento
The first sentence in the bible can be translated as I ya gege, Rubanga ocweo wi polo kede piny ("In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth").