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The Lendu language is a Central Sudanic language spoken by the Balendru, an ethno-linguistic agriculturalist group residing in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo in the area west and northwest of Lake Albert, specifically the Ituri Region of Orientale Province. It is one of the most populous of the Central Sudanic languages. There are three-quarters of a million Lendu speakers in the DRC. A conflict between the Lendu and the Hema was the basis of the Ituri conflict.

Besides the Balendru, Lendu is spoken as a native language by a portion of the Hema, Alur, and Okebu. In Uganda, the Lendu tribe live in the districts of Nebbi and Zombo districts, northwest of Lake Albert.

Names

Ethnologue gives Bbadha as an alternate name of Lendu, but Blench (2000) lists Badha as a distinct language. A draft listing of Nilo-Saharan languages, available from his website and dated 2012, lists Lendu/Badha.

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

• is mainly heard as an allophone of /n/ when preceding velar consonants.

Implosives

Demolin (1995) posits that Lendu has voiceless implosives, /ɓ̥ ɗ̥ ʄ̊/ (/ƥ ƭ ƈ/). However, Goyvaerts (1988) had described these as creaky-voiced implosives /ɓ̰ ɗ̰ ʄ̰/, as in Hausa, contrasting with a series of modally voiced implosives /ɓ ɗ ʄ/ as in Kalabari, and Ladefoged judges that this seems to be a more accurate description.

References

1. Lendu at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. "AFRICA | 101 Last Tribes - Lendu people". www.101lasttribes.com. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
3. Demolin, Didier. 1995. The phonetics and phonology of glottalized consonants in Lendu. In Connell, Bruce and Arvaniti, Amalia (eds.), Phonology and Phonetic Evidence. Papers in Laboratory Phonology IV, 368-385. Cambridge Univ. Press.
4. Goyvaerts, Didier L. 1988. Glottalized Consonants a New Dimension. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 3. 97-102. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
5. Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 87–89. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.

• Kutsch-Lojenga, Constance. 1989. The Secret behind Vowelless Syllables in Lendu. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 11. 115–126. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter.
• Tucker, Archibald N. 1940. Lendu. In The Eastern Sudanic Languages: Volume I, 380–418. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Trifkovic, Mirjana. 1977. Tone preserving vowel reduction in Lendu. Studies in African Linguistics 8. 121–125.

• Central Sudanic languages
• Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo