Kare is a southern Mbum language of the Central African Republic, spoken by the Kare people in the mountains of the northeasterly Ouham-Pendé prefecture around Bocaranga. It is spoken by around 97,000 people in the country, and another few thousand speakers in Cameroon. The language's presence on the southeastern edge of the Mbum family is thought to reflect early 19th-century migrations from the Adamawa Plateau, fleeing Fulani raids. Ethnologue 17 reports that Kare is intelligible with Mbum proper. However, languages more closely related to either are not reported to be intelligible. Ethnologue lists Tale as a dialect, but Blench leaves it unclassified within the Mbum languages. Ethnologue also lists Kali as a synonym; Blench lists a Kali language in a different branch of the Mbum languages.
Phonology
Kare has the following consonantal phonemes: It has the following vowel phonemes: There is a phonological contrast between high and low tone, and a rarer phonetic mid tone whose phonological status is not established. Only monosyllabic words may bear rising or falling tone.
Grammar
The basic word order of Kare is subject-verb-object, eg kɛ́ hòrò húrù "he ate manioc". Negation is handled with the sentence-final particleyá "not"; when negated, the locative copula yè "be " is replaced by tí, and the equative copula ɓá "be " by tí ɓá. Verbal nouns are formed by raising the last syllable's tone and adding a suffix -Cà, where C = l or r after an oral vowel, n after a nasal vowel, and is empty after a consonant: fà "deny" > fárà "denial", sɛ̀l "untie" > sɛ́là "untying".
There is a closed class of morphologically invariant adjectives, which typically precede the noun but may also follow it to indicate a permanent quality, or may be used as nouns in their own right. Determiners follow the noun, and are followed by the plural marker rì: nzù kɛ́ rí pí "the people too". Numerals and quantifiers come at the end, following the plural marker: nzù ndíɓí "five people", nzù rì sérè "two people". Direct genitives are formed by juxtaposition, eg sã̀ũ̀ lìà "the story's basis"; analytic genitives use the particleʔà, eg vùn ʔà bá "the father's house". Relative clauses are formed with a demonstrative followed by the relative marker ɗá, eg nzù yɛ̀í ɗá rí mí léóɗáà "the person who robbed me yesterday".
Prepositions
All adpositions in Kare precede their complement. There are four primary prepositions: kà "with ", té "with ", ʔá "in", báŋ "like", eg kɛ́ ɡí té bá nɛ̄ "he came with his father". Alongside these there are a number of secondary postpositions transparently derived from nouns, eg tûl "head" > túl "on top of".
