Tetela language

Tetela
Ɔtɛtɛla
Native to	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Region	Northern Kasai Oriental Province
Native speakers	unknown (760,000 cited 1991)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Bantu (Zone C) Tetela (C.70) Tetela–Hamba Tetela
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: tll – Tetela hba – Hamba
Glottolog	tete1253
Guthrie code	C.71

Tetela (Otetela, Kitetela, Kikitatela), also Sungu, is a Bantu language of northern Kasai-Oriental Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo spoken by the Tetela people.

Ethnologue removes the Hamba dialect to a different branch of Bantu. However, Maho (2009) retains it in Tetela.

Noun classes

In common with all Bantu languages, Tetela grammar arranges nouns into a number of classes. The ancestral system had 22 classes (counting singular and plural as distinct according to the Meinhof system), with most Bantu languages sharing at least ten of these.

class	semantics	prefix	singular	translation	plural	translation
1, 2	persons	o-/ɔ-/w-, a-	omfúnjí	scribe, secretary	amfúnjí	scribes, secretaries
3, 4	trees, etc	o-/ɔ-/w-, e-/ɛ-	ojja	place	ejja	places; region
5, 6	various	di-/dy-, a-	dihamvú	fruit of Chrysophyllum lacourtianum	ahamvú	fruits of Chrysophyllum lacourtianum
7, 8	various	ke-/e-, di-/dy-	kesashi	chief	disashi	chiefs
9, 10	animals, etc	Ø-/N-, Ø-/N-	mbódí	goat	mbódí	goats
11, 10	abstract concepts, etc	lo-, N-	lolémí	language	némí	languages
12, 13	various	ka-/k-, to-/t-	kashikɛ	helmet (from French casque)	toshikɛ	helmets
19, 13	various	°i- (complex morphology), to-/t-	jɔ́ndɔ́	???	tɔlɔ́ndɔ́	???