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Mono is a language spoken by about 65,000 people^[1] in the northwestern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is one of the Banda languages, a subbranch of the Ubangian branch of the Niger-Congo languages. It has five dialects: Bili, Bubanda, Mpaka, Galaba, and Kaga.

Mono has 33 consonant phonemes, including three labial-velar stops (/k͡p/, /ɡ͡b/, and prenasalized /^ŋɡ͡b/), an asymmetrical eight-vowel system, and a labiodental flap ([ѵ]) that contrasts with both /v/ and /w/. It is a tonal language.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Ethnologue report for Mono

• Kamanda-Kola, Roger. 2003. Phonologie et morpho-syntaxe du mono: Langue oubanguienne du Congo R.D. (LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics 60). Munich: LINCOM EUROPA.
• Olson, Kenneth S. 2004. 'Mono'. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34(2). 233–238.
• Olson, Kenneth S. 2005. The phonology of Mono (SIL International and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics 140). Dallas: SIL & UTA.
• Olson, Kenneth S. & Brian E. Schrag. 2000. 'An overview of Mono phonology'. In H. Ekkehard Wolff & Orin Gensler (eds.), Proceedings from the 2nd World Congress of African Linguistics, Leipzig 1997, 393–409. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.

External links

• SIL article on new phonetic symbol for labiodental flap