South Banda language

South Banda
Native to	Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Native speakers	(200,000 cited 1996)[1]
Language family	Ubangian Banda South Banda
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: lnl – South Central Banda lna – Langbashe
Glottolog	sout2786

South Banda is a dialect continuum of the Banda languages spoken by around 200,000 or so people, primarily in the Central African Republic but with ten thousand or so in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (6,000 as of the 1984 census). The two varieties may be mutually intelligible.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar		Uvular	Glottal
						plain	lab.
Nasal		m	n		ɲ
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	t͡ʃ		k	k͡p		ʔ
	voiced	b	d	d͡ʒ		ɡ	ɡ͡b
	prenasal	ᵐb	ⁿd	ⁿd͡ʒ		ᵑɡ	ᵑᵐɡ͡b
	implosive	ɓ	ɗ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ʃ				(χ)	h
	voiced	v	z	ʒ				ʁ
Tap				ɽ
Lateral			l
Approximant					j		w

• /ʁ/ is heard as a voiceless fricative [χ] when occurring after a voiceless consonant.^[2]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i ĩ	ɨ	u ũ
Close-mid	e	ə	o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ ɔ̃
Open		a ã

References

1. South Central Banda at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
   Langbashe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. Touguele, Samuel (2008). Phonologie et Morphologie de la langue ngbúgù parlée dans la Basse-Kotto en Centrafrique. Université de Yaoundé.