Kera is anEast Chadic language spoken by 45,000 people in SouthwestChad and 6,000 people in NorthCameroon.^{[citation needed]}

It was called "Tuburi" byJoseph Greenberg, a name shared withTupuri.

In Cameroon, Kera is spoken by small, isolated and scattered groups in the southern departments ofMayo-Danay (Wina commune) andDiamaré (Ndoukoula district) in the Far North Region. It is mainly spoken in Chad. In Cameroon, the main group is near the border, south ofViri. There are about 6,000 speakers in Cameroon.^[2]

Kera is asubject–verb–object language, usingprepositions. It uses exclusively borderlinecase-marking.^{[citation needed]}

The phonetic symbols and charts used are from theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Kera has alabiodental flap /ⱱ/, a rare sound attested in only 80 languages of the world. Out of the 60 or so words that contain this consonant, 95% of them areideophones, which are sounds that evoke the very meaning of that word. Near-minimal pairs between the labiodental flap and thelabiodental fricative /v/ exist: /vìw/ (hearing something pass by) and /ⱱīw/ (see something pass quickly).^[5]

Kera allows almost all consonants to appear at the end of a syllable in word-medial position. However, at the end of a word as a whole, only thesonorants /l, w, j/ can occur. When a non-sonorant sound occurs at the end of a word, the vowel [i] is added at the end to avoid breaking this rule.^[5]

Kera'ssyllables are relatively simple. It allows for a consonant to be followed by a long or short vowel and may take an extracoda consonant at the end. The initial consonant is optional in all cases. Additionally, there are several phonological rules at play that prevent consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel sequences from being possible. For example, [nèlɛ̀] and [fɛ́lɛ] are not allowed in Kera. To prevent these sequences from occurring, Kera will eitherlengthen the final vowel ([nèlɛ̀ɛ]), orremove the final vowel ([fɛ́l]).^[5]

Kera has sixcontrastive vowels. Inclosed syllables, the mid and low vowels will undergoraising. Kera also has phonemictones, whereby a change in pitch alone may differentiate words.^[5]

Kera has several typesvowel harmony:

1. High vowels in both theroot andsuffix will spread and replace other vowels within the word in both directions. This is notable, as it is rare for languages to have high vowels be the dominant ones in vowel harmony systems.^[5]
2. Vowels in suffixes force the central vowel of the root to have the same degree offrontness androunding.^[5]
3. There are several contexts which cause total harmony within the root (i.e. the vowel is wholly copied). These contexts include: word-final consonant-vowel syllables, the historical affixes -a and -a, and theepenthetic vowel -i followingobstruents.^[5]

• Research on stress in Kera

ThisChad-related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it.

• v
• t
• e

This article about a language spoken inCameroon is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Languages of Cameroon
• Languages of Chad
• East Chadic languages
• Chadic language stubs
• Chad stubs
• Cameroon stubs

• Pages containing links to subscription-only content
• Language articles citing Ethnologue 18
• CS1: long volume value
• CS1 French-language sources (fr)
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Language articles with old Ethnologue 18 speaker data
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from July 2025
• Articles with unsourced statements from October 2023
• All stub articles