• Words
  • Tone
  • Accent
  • Vowel length
• Vowels
  • General
  • Diphthong
  • Juxtaposed
• Consonants
  • General
  • Doubled
• introduction

Accent

In any word of two or more syllables the emphasis will usually fall on one of those syllables. Of course, also tone and vowel length will provide a certain emphasis to a part of a word.

Indepent of context or the place of a word in a sentence, in zarma it always is the same syllable that has the accent.

This Zarma course marks a syllable in bold to indicate the syllable with the the principle emphasis.

The general rules for accents are:

• mono- and two-syllabic words, the accent falls on the first syllable, with the acceptions of words beginning with an a, i or u.
• two-syllabic words starting with an an a, i or u, the accent falls on the second syllable. Exceptions are names of people, that may still have the accent on the first syllable.
• words with more than two syllables, the accent falls on the second syllable.

An accent in Zarma is realised by increasing the exhalation pressure. The vowel of the syllable with the accent has a stronger sound than that of the syllable(s) without accent, and the articulation of the initial consonant is much stronger.

For two-syllabic words beginning with an a, i or u, and for multisyllabic words there a a very brief pause just before the initial consonant of the syllable with accent. For example, there is a short pause between the 'a' and 'raŋ' in araŋ, and between 'boŋ' and 'kono' in boŋkono, and then the 'r' (in 'raŋ') and the 'k' in 'kono' are stressed energetically.