الكيرا

Kera is an East Chadic language of Chad and northern Cameroon, spoken by ~50,000-80,000 people in the Léré and Pala areas of southwestern Chad. Linguistically, Kera shares typical East Chadic features: tonal (3 tones), gender-based verb agreement, complex consonant clusters, and an elaborate system of pluractional verbs. The Kera people are subsistence farmers in the Sahel transition zone. Karen Ebert's 1979 reference grammar (Sprache und Tradition der Kera) and modern Bible translation work since the 1990s have produced standardized literacy materials. Kera shows interesting typological convergence with Niger-Congo neighbors despite its Afro-Asiatic affiliation.