Jen language

Dza, also called Jen, is an Adamawa language of Nigeria spoken in the border regions of Gombe, Adamawa, and Taraba states along the northern bank of the Benue River.

The following is the phonology of Dza:^[2]

1. The implosives are weak in Dza, [b] and [d] can take the place of their implosive counterparts but the implosive sounds cannot be substituted in place of [b] or [d].
2. The palatal stops /c/ and /ɟ/ seem to be dialectal, either presenting as [c] and [ɟ] or as palatalized velar stops [kj] and [gj].
3. The /m̥/ phoneme is rare, only occurring in m̥ɨ́ 'five' and other related words, but its usage is very frequent.
4. /r/ only occurs in loanwords but is frequent in use.
5. All approximant phonemes become voiceless before nasal vowels, allowing for an allophonic [j̥] while the other voiceless approximants /ʍ/ and /ɥ̥/ are true phonemes.

Like most West African languages, Dza is a tonal language. There are five main tonemes: three level tones (high, mid, and low) and two contour tones (rising and falling). Tone is not orthographically marked.

Dza uses an alphabet of 50 letters based on the Latin alphabet. Proposed in 2008, the orthography uses a combination of multigraphs and diacritics to correspond to the phonemes of Dza, using the letters <w> and <y> to represent labialization and palatalization, respectively. While [j̥] is an allophone of /j/ in Dza only occurring before nasal vowels, it has its own grapheme <hy>. When /ŋ/ is word-initial and labialized, it is represented as <n>; otherwise, it is written as <ng>.

• Languages of Nigeria
• Bambukic languages
• Atlantic–Congo language stubs
• Taraba State

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 22
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