Kunama

The Kunama are a people of western Eritrea. Kunama (/ku 1 naa 23 ma 2 /) is their selfname, and they call their language /ku 1 naa 23 ma 1 au 23 ra 2 / or /ki 1 naa 23 ma 1 ɲeel 23 a 2 / but this is usually referred to by Western scholars simply as ‘Kunama’. It is a language of the Nilo-Saharan phylum, though its family affiliations within that phylum are still a matter of debate; cf. Bender 1989; Ehret 1989. Overall, Kunama has approximately 100,000 speakers. It comprises seven lects (John Abraha Ashkaba 1999), the most widely known of which are Barka (/ba 2 ka 2 /) and Marda (/mar 2 da 32 /). The present work is based on the latter, though the differences between these two lects is not very great.