Kare (Kãrɛ̃, Kareng; autonymnzáà kã́rĩ́, wherenzáà ='mouth') is a southernMbum language of theCentral African Republic, spoken by theKare people in the mountains of the northeasterlyOuham-Pendé prefecture aroundBocaranga. It is spoken by around 97,000 people in the country, and another few thousand speakers inCameroon. The language's presence on the southeastern edge of the Mbum family is thought to reflect early 19th-century migrations from theAdamawa Plateau, fleeing Fulani raids.^[3]

Ethnologue 17 reports that Kare is intelligible withMbum proper. However, languages more closely related to either are not reported to be intelligible.Ethnologue lists Tale (Tali) as a dialect, but Blench (2004) leaves it unclassified within the Mbum languages.Ethnologue also lists Kali as a synonym; Blench lists aKali language in a different branch of the Mbum languages.

Kare has the following consonantal phonemes:^[4]

It has the following vowel phonemes:^[5]

There is a phonological contrast between high and low tone (e.g.sá'say' vs.sà'laugh'), and a rarer phonetic mid tone whose phonological status is not established. Only monosyllabic words may bear rising or falling tone.^[6]

The basic word order of Kare issubject–verb–object:

Negation is handled with the sentence-final particleyá'not';^[8] when negated, the locative copulayè'be (in a place)' is replaced bytí, and the equative copulaɓá'be (equivalent to)' bytí ɓá.

Verbal nouns are formed by raising the last syllable's tone and adding a suffix-Cà, where C =l orr after an oral vowel,n after a nasal vowel, and is empty after a consonant:fà'deny' >fárà'denial',sɛ̀l'untie' >sɛ́là'untying'.^[9]

Kare has nogrammatical gender. Its personal pronouns are as follows:^[10]

To these may be addedhánà'each other, other'.

There is a closed class of morphologically invariant adjectives (e.g.fé'new',sɛ́ŋɛ́'red'), which typically precede the noun but may also follow it to indicate a permanent quality, or may be used as nouns in their own right.^[11] Determiners (hánà'other',kɛ́'the',yɛ̀í'this',yɔ̀ɔ́'that',nɛ̄'that yonder') follow the noun, and are followed by the plural markerrì:

Numerals and quantifiers come at the end, following the (optional) plural marker:

Direct genitives are formed by juxtaposition

analytic genitives use the particleʔà

Relative clauses are formed with a demonstrative followed (not always immediately) by the relative markerɗá

All adpositions in Kare precede their complement. There are four primary (pure) prepositions:kà'with (instrumental)',té'with (comitative)',ʔá'in',báŋ'like',^[16]

Alongside these there are a number of secondary postpositions transparently derived from nouns (often body parts), e.g.tûl'head' >túl'on top of'.[17]

• Lim, François (1997).Description linguistique du Kare (phonologie-syntaxe). Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle.
• Roger Blench, 2004.List of Adamawa languages (ms)

• Languages of the Central African Republic
• Languages of Cameroon
• Mbum languages

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• Language articles citing Ethnologue 18
• Articles with short description
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• Articles containing Kare (Central African Republic)-language text
• Language articles with old Ethnologue 18 speaker data