Berta, Wetawit, is spoken by the Berta

Berta people

The Berta or Bertha are an ethnic group living along the border of Sudan and Ethiopia. They speak a Nilo-Saharan language that is not related to those of their Nilo-Saharan neighbors . Their total Ethiopian population is about 183,000 people....

 (or Bertha) in Sudan

Sudan

Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...

 and Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...

. It is a language isolate which has been also included as branch of the proposed Nilo-Saharan

Nilo-Saharan languages

The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet...

 language family. It has the typical word order subject–verb–object. It is a tonal

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...

 language. It has significantly influenced some of the Eastern Jebel languages

Eastern Jebel languages

The Eastern Jebel languages are a small subfamily belonging to the Eastern Sudanic subgroup of Nilo-Saharan. They are spoken in the hills of An Nil al Azraq province in eastern Sudan The group consists of:...

. The Arabic name "Beni-Shangul" (as in the Ethiopian province of Benishangul-Gumuz) derives from a Berta expression (with bele "rock/stone" misanalyzed as Arabic beni "sons"). Berta has several dialects (some quite divergent) including: Bake, Dabuso, Gebeto, Mayu, and Shuru. Fadashi

Fadashi language

Fadashi is an erstwhile dialect of Berta that is distinct enough to be considered a separate language....

 and Undu

Undu language

Undu is an erstwhile dialect of Berta that is distinct enough to be considered a separate language....

 are divergent enough to be considered separate languages, in which case the dialect name Gebeto may be used for the rest of Berta.

Pronouns

The pronouns of Berta are as follows:

	Topic	Postverbal subject	Postverbal object
I	àl(ì)	-lɪ́ɪ̀	-ɟì
you (sg.)	(à)ŋɡó	-ŋó	-ŋɡó
he, she, it	ɲìnè	-né	ɲìnè, -né
we	χàtâŋ	-ŋàa	χàtâŋ
you (pl.)	χàtú	χátú	χàtú
they	mèrée	mérée	mèrée

External links

• "Map of the Berta language", LL-MAP website
• World Atlas of Language Structures
  World Atlas of Language Structures
  The World Atlas of Language Structures is a database of structural properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-ROM in 2005, and was released as the second edition on the Internet in April 2008...
  
  information on Berta